Byzantine

The shoreline sand grows hispid
With discarded textiles rinsed
By rains down slopes of landfill

Mountains where fast-fashion scraps
From Kantamanto markets
Selling items from the ships

Unloading millions of bales
Of low-quality castoff clothes
Accumulate. What to do?

Cattle browse the landfill hills.
Fish choke on polyester
Threads dragged down into the waves.

Humans debate how to slow
Fast fashion’s waste. Can fashion
Be made ethical and cheap?

Can you reduce your fashion
Footprint? Talk accumulates.
The hideous landfills build,

And they are so beautiful
In their grayish mosaics
Under blue skies or in rain.

You are not unimportant
Anymore than anything,
But there’ll be a world one day

When sedimentary hills
Of all you wore and tattered
And tried so hard to escape

Are ordinary landscapes
For whatever lives have arrived
By way of mistakes of waste.