Fred Aiken Writing

November 30, 2023

canned boba tea

empty cans of cheap boba tea
from h mart pile up
in my recycling bin,
and i’m pretty sure my wife asked me
to leave them out for the trash/recycling/people
to take on trash day,
but i never wrote down when trash day was,
so they’re still sitting there,
accumulating a colony of flies that seem perfectly
content subsisting on my waste

November 29, 2023

unnecessary darkness//or sitting in the dark//whichever you prefer

i listened to the sermon while sipping
on an ube latte
in a dark corner in my home
that i never put in lights in
because it didn’t seem necessary
to see anything in there

November 28, 2023

tourism is an artform

i sometimes look like a tourists
//playing with sand in the playa de la rosa,
//while looking for a trashcan to dispense
/of this used snickers bar wrapper that i found
in the claws of a crab
//looking to collect a recycling fee from
//some bureaucrat illuminated by the algae
twinkling in the moon’s wink