The dumpster diver and the freegan by Stephanie Staab

It’s illegal in Germany because the dumpster and everything in it

is the property of the supermarket until the moment it is taken to a landfill.

At Ed’s apartment, he served chocolate cookies on a chipped porcelain dish.

I knew it was all from the garbage but I ate anyway.

He found five bottles of Bailey’s Irish Cream that way

two years expired, what a night we had.

The joy of a meandering toast.

Behind the supermarket at night he said there was a man sometimes

directing the scene from inside the dumpster.

He’d hold up broccoli and say

“Anyone making a casserole for dinner?”

“How about three tomatoes for you?”

“Breakfast rolls?”

And the point is

one night in Paris, after a party

long before the virus and all that

Melanie in a dress grabbed a half empty bottle of water from the gutter

and drank it all the way down

then just shrugged and said

“People have this idea that things are dirty but they’re really not.”

Stephanie Staab’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Summerset Review and Chiron Review among others. Her first chapbook, Earthling, was published in April 2020 by Selcouth Station press. Her poem 'I have this secret see' was nominated for Best of the Net 2020.