“I wanted to like this poem a lot; I even read it at public reads more than once. I ultimately trashed this poem because it was an experiment in form that I felt just didn’t work out.”

“All of these poems come from a manuscript I am compiling in a similar spirit to trash to treasure’s mission – I am revising and reclaiming years of my idle, impulsive free writes and polishing them into something that means more.”

“I submitted this two or three times, until I received feedback for it. On the one hand, I could relate to the suggestions that were made. On the other hand, I just couldn’t find the right starting point for revision.”

“Regarding ‘Let’s go out to a movie show’, I thought for a while about writing erotic poetry, and tried, but after widening my reading in erotic poetry, especially in the adult section of All Poetry, I realized that women write better erotic poetry and stories than I could and ever would. So, I just abandoned the piece. Re-reading, I think that was the right decision, as the poem is so teen boy POV that it never gets exciting.
‘Biographies’ has too much self-pity in it. I think that good poetry rises above self-pity. Again, it’s a youth’s poetry, not mature. Is there anything of worth in it? Maybe, if you were an activist once.”

“Rather than trashed, these are some of the poems that were kept in a metaphorical chest with rusty locks, guarded with snakes. I am 21 now and these were written in the dark ages of my 15th year, like for example, the first one is literally a live word vomit during a panic episode. I am (glad to say) far better emotionally than before, and reading these poems brings a lot of ache and not-so-good memories that I would really like to forget, but I can’t, so they were just left to rot…”

“It is made of lines from a story I trashed due to feeling that it didn't have enough of a plot to be worth finishing. However, I wanted to take some of the lines from the piece and give them new life; hence, this poem.”

“I thrashed these set of poems due to internal reasons. When I first wrote these poems - most especially Hymn of Grief and the third poem - I felt I was resurrecting a grief memory. As climate change were fostering, most houses were flooded which form the basic part of the third poem. I remember how an infant was rescued, already death. It was saddening, so I cast them away. Until recently, I decided to revisit them and let the world know about these events.”

“These two poems were rejected by another publication, and I was going to sit on them for a bit. I am a believer in that time can be a great editor, so my plan was to return to these pieces at some point in the future. However, I can be a bit forgetful and have actually unintentionally abandoned poems just because I never thought to go back and edit them.”

“I trashed this piece because it feels more like a personal letter to someone who never had the chance to hear it.”

“I trashed this because it felt more like a reminder for myself to forgive my family for any mistakes they made while they were raising me, because if I was in their position I don’t know if my choices would be any different.”

“I wrote this piece while hiding away at a party during my sophomore year of college. I trashed it because I was simply struggling to find my place in the world. I didn’t know who I was. Looking back, this piece is one of my favorites.”