To the Plastic Bag At the Bottom of the Mariana Trench

For years, you sat crushed
under my sink. I needed you
briefly and after that

there was the journey,
can to landfill, gust, and long
descent. Months

must have passed, slow fall
unnoticed, before the lights
swung over your body,

elegy in suspense. As I
myself am identical with nature,
its asphyxiated fish,

I love saying people
are just the fucking worst.
But the tiny greed of eating out

crawls into my mouth and begins
its compromise. It cleans
my teeth. The man in the sub

who found the bag said, “It was a very happy,
peaceful moment for me.
And then I came up.”

Cameron Quan Louie lives in Tucson, where he works with poetry nonprofit POG. He received his MFA from the University of Washington. You can find his poems, prose, and erasures in Hobart, jubilat, Sonora Review, Fourth Genre, Quarterly West, and The Margins, among others.