Craigslist Unwanted Plants
I.
Free, free, free.
I would hate to cut these up, if someone could use these.
If the ad is still up,
they are still here.
One hedge bush,
and the other has yellow flowers in the spring.
II.
Water lilies are taking over our pond.
Help thin them out!
If you respond, please send your number.
I’ll call you.
Free water lilies.
III.
Unknown plant growing from tennis ball left in rain.
Come buy it and keep it growing.
Maybe you’ll have a tree one day,
or a rose,
you never know.
Source & Method
These found texts come from Craigslist (1 and 2) and Facebook marketplace (3) from June 2014 through December 2019. I do not add text to the ads, but I do manipulate the text in terms of punctuation and order.
Sarah Plummer is a doctoral student at Virginia Tech studying circus, politics, and social order. She is an Appalachian who, in a former life, worked as a journalist in southern West Virginia.
Photo by Andisheh A