bit     part     discarded     old

useless     torn     from scraps     rip

into pieces     get into a     over

a thing     cut     out     from us

him     her     fragments    save

as in paper     words     unlike

waste     can have     significant

something     out of     something

“Scrap/Scrap/Scraps” from Admit One: An American Scrapbook by Martha Collins, ©2016. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Martha Collins is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently published, Admit One: An American Scrapbook, and also co-translator of four collections of Vietnamese poetry. Founder of the creative writing program at University of Massachusetts-Boston, she served for ten years as Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College.