Poem by Marsha Mittman

SCAVENGERS
(India)
 
the mountains loom large
not pine laden and fragrant
 
nor craggy and awe inspiring
rather huge piles of garbage
 
that daily grow higher
foul rotting reeking
 
of human waste and remnants
and the women children
 
search and dig through the
odiferous malignant heaps
 
for any prize piece of cloth
object wood metal to sell or
 
worse for a rotting morsel
to eat starved as they are
 
with blisters and open sores
on their hands and feet where
 
constant contact is made
and the seagulls natural
 
scavengers of the trash
fly about competing for food
 
the gulls ultimately having
the choice and ability to leave
 
but without education money
skills the human scavengers -
 
the untouchables - are relegated
to and as garbage for life

Marsha Warren Mittman’s humorous memoir, You Know You Moved to South Dakota from New York City WHEN… (Scurfpea Publishing), is a “Western Horizons Award” winner. Poems/essays/short stories have appeared in American, British, German, and Australian literary journals and anthologies, including six Chicken Soup for the Soul tales. The author of three chapbooks, Mittman’s received various poetry/prose distinctions in the US and Ireland, and a Writer’s Residency at Alabama’s Fairhope Center for Writing Arts.

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