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Scrap Art

May 10, 2017/in Flash Prose, Flash Prose, Summer-Fall 2017 / by Deborah Thompson

[creative nonfiction]

When a new recycling shop specializing in crafts items opens near me and requests donations, I decide it’s time: I gather up my years’ worth of hoarded Altoids tins, Mason jars, fancy gift boxes, barely crinkled tissue paper, and a jar full of the orange and magenta ribbons from the handles of boutique shopping bags, too pretty to toss, still flirtatious, raring for reuse.

Opening the shop door wafts up the smell of dust and balsa wood and faraway hints of cedar. I wade into bins of bins, tubs of tubs, boxes of boxes. A barrel of baskets nuzzles one of old cookie tins, 10¢ apiece. Computer letters unmoored from their keyboard beg to become words. There are boxes of crayons and crayon nubs for 1¢ apiece, perhaps because the school year ran out before the crayons did, or maybe the kids just moved on to new crayons when the old ones lost their sharp point. There’s a giant bowl of cancelled stamps, 1¢ apiece, waiting to be rehomed in scrapbooks. Paint and glue tubes, popsicle sticks, corks from wine bottles, wine bottles de-corked. All “rescued from the landfill.”

In the heavily packed back of the store, my gaze snags first on the one-eyed head of a broken doll who hexes me with her singular stare. Then I see the severed ceramic doll parts all around her: cracked heads staring open-eyed. Arms reaching across each other, grabbing blindly. Feet and legs lined up, bodiless, at 25¢ apiece. My hoarder longings stir: I want to make something of these bits and pieces, some sort of found art to showcase their unrecognized beauty, to give them meaning, to redeem them.

But I see now that this display is itself, already, the found art I would make. No other re-assemblage could better capture this left-behind condition in a land of instant obsolescence than this array of unseeing eyes on heads looking for bodies, these corks climbing each other’s backs, and these tins tinkling and clanging against each other’s solid hollowness. No art better than those arms, nudging without elbows, grabbing without grasp. None more articulate than those torsos rolling limbless and unanchored amidst a limbo of limbs.

 

Deborah Thompson Deborah Thompson is an associate professor of English at Colorado State University, where she helped to develop the master’s degree in creative nonfiction. A Pushcart prizewinner, she has published creative essays in venues such as Briar Cliff Review, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review Online, Passages North, and Upstreet.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Douglas Menagh https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Douglas Menagh2017-05-10 08:08:192017-12-07 08:43:46Scrap Art

Issue Archive

  • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
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  • Issue 1: Spring 2012

Genre Archive

  • Creative Nonfiction
  • Essays
  • Fiction
  • Flash Prose
  • Lunch Specials
  • Poetry
  • Interviews
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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published every Friday.

Today’s course:

Where Are You From?

August 5, 2022/in Blog / Majella Pinto
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The Old Folks’ Home

July 22, 2022/in Blog / Karen Gaul Schulman
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Peace, Love, and a lot of Loud Rock & Roll

June 17, 2022/in A Transfer, Blog / Sunee Lyn Foley
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Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

QVC-land

May 6, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / D. E. Hardy
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Diana-Hardy_QVC_Feature_Photo.png 533 800 D. E. Hardy https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png D. E. Hardy2022-05-06 23:45:322022-07-18 17:54:56QVC-land

Escape Artists at the End of the World

April 29, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Lisa Levy
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The House in the Middle

April 15, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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More coming soon!

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every Monday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

My Mother’s Hands

August 8, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Annie Marhefka
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Defy Gravity

August 1, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Megan Peck
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Little Shrimp

July 25, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Karen Poppy
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

The variety in this issue speaks not only to the eclectic world we inhabit but to the power of the human spirit. We live in an uncertain world. In the U.S., we’re seeing mass shootings daily. Across the world, we’re still very much in a pandemic, some being trapped in their homes for weeks on end, others struggling to stay alive in hospitals. War continues to wage in Ukraine. Iran and North Korea are working diligently to make nuclear weapons. The list goes on. Still, we have artists who are willing and able to be vulnerable with one another, to share stories and art to help us try and make sense of our world.

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