Trash Poems is a collection of poems from daily writings on found items: receipts, coffee cups, gum wrappers, and even a leaf. Each poem was written in the moment, with no thought to spelling or grammar, leaving the raw words of the moment on the page. Trash Poems is more than a book of poetry, it is a revolution and a movement. It tells us "it's okay" to just write, there are no pre-requisites. And at its heart, it is full of raw poetry.
"How ecstatic (and envious!) I am reading Trash Poems. Alex Z. Salinas has manifested a masterpiece of meditative poesy-one part eco/urban art book, one part ADD Leaves of Grass, all parts adhering to the Beat's first thought/best thought. From macro ruminations on family and mortality down to micro observations of a BIC pen, a persistent gnat, a looping Kanye video, Salinas takes note of impermanence with a haiku master's eye/mind, dashing it down on the lost and found objects around us: receipts, cups, wrappers, napkins. All of it, trash. How easily these words can be ash-a nugget left buried for us within a pithy political poem. But no worries, gentle reader, this book will be there for you when you need it. These messages-not-in-bottles, scooped up and cataloged for our convenience." Harold Whit Williams, author of A Rain Ancestral and guitarist for Cotton Mather