The Harvest Dumpster

Joel Robert Ferguson




O Manitoban cold-storage beneath 
lot lights, snow-night, ornamental fence
and unmanned cameras; open-maw dumpster 
behind the food bank, twixt tracks, 
the old cracker factory, warehouses
and grain elevator, filled with bounty.

How far the food comes to wind up

here; Prince Edward Island potatoes, occasional
Alberta beef b-cuts saved by Winnipeg's February,
cans labeled in Thai or Hindi,

for whatever reason not parceled out

out front, but still good in natural stasis.

And at the call of gleaning precision, gloved hands

shovel food into bags, and there's always some 

                     bigmouth who, making note 

                     of the waste of the West 

          blurts out starving children 

a world away as though 

we weren’t picking through trash at midnight.

Joel Robert Ferguson is the author of The Lost Cafeteria (2020, Signature Editions) and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from Concordia University in Montreal. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Arc, The Columbia Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The Malahat Review, Orbis, and Southword Journal. He lives in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory, with his partner and their three cats.