As the tides of STUFF move from floor to floor over here, I’m finding boxes and drawers I didn’t go through during the Great Organization of 2025. So the pile of things to donate is growing, which reminded me of this poem I saw in the Ordinary Plots newsletter. As I learned, “Samuel Cheney is an ex-Mormon poet from Centerville, Utah, who now lives in Baltimore. He is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, and his debut manuscript, BELIEVERS, was a finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series.”
Deseret Industries Thrift
by Samuel Cheney
Promise yourself
you’re looking
for nothing.
Praise the abandoned
Diet Coke can,
the squealing
quivering carts’ wheels,
the aproned associates
who estimate costs
where tags have been
ripped off
out of hope.
The glass case of valuables:
Stockton All-Star card
framed in black mat.
From an ’80s Okinawa mission,
a Pentax.
Talmage’s Jesus the Christ, bound
in napped leather.
This country
affords so little.
These automatic doors
open and condone you.
Who here isn’t untested,
one touch before
broken, selling for
something fair.
I don’t want to live
my life
like a pair
of skis. Make me
of wool. Bring me out
every year—
pass me on—
bury me with someone.