Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout AudioPoem

This audio poem, narrated by John Paul Radel, tells the story of Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout, a girl who refuses to take out the garbage. As a result, the garbage piles up to the point where it fills the house and drives away her friends and neighbors. Eventually, Sarah decides to take out the garbage, but it's too late as it has spread across the entire state. The poem ends with a message to always take out the garbage. This audio poem was recorded by Headphone Network, a Jackhammer Research Production, in partnership with Jackhammer Music, created by Student Studios. This is Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out, by Shel Silverstein, narrated by John Paul Radel. We are not claiming ownership of this literary work, we are simply making it accessible to more listeners. Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out. She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans, candy the yams and spice the hams. And though her dad would scream and shout, she simply would not take the garbage out. And so it piled up to the ceiling, coffee grounds, potato peelings, brown bananas and rotten peas, chunks of sour cottage cheese. It filled the can, it covered the floor, it cracked the window and blocked the door, with bacon rinds and chicken bones, drippy ends of ice cream cones, prune pits, peach pits, orange peel, gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal, pizza crusts and withered greens, soggy beans and tangerines, crusts of black-burned buttered toast, grizzly bits of beefy roasts. The garbage rolled on down the hall, it raised the roof, it broke the wall, greasy napkins, cookie crumbs, blobs of gooey bubble gum, cellophane from green bologna, rubbery blubbery macaroni, peanut butter caked and dry, curdled milk and crust of pie, moldy melons dried up mustard, eggshells mixed with lemon custard, cold french fries and rancid meat, yellow lumps of cream of wheat. At last the garbage reached so high, it finally touched the sky, and all the neighbors moved away and none of her friends would come to play. And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said, okay I'll take the garbage out, but then of course it was much too late, the garbage reached across the state, from New York to the Golden Gate, and there, in the garbage, she did hate. Poor Sarah met an awful fate, that I cannot right now relate, because the hour is much too late. But children, remember Sarah Stout, and always take the garbage out. You're listening to a Headphone Studios production.