01.11.2019
Weekly poem on Trump Presidency
MICHELLE BITTING
Ode To My Red Swingline Stapler
It’s a hot Sriracha taco
On a cold winter’s day
It’s the flame in the fire truck’s reflection
The long blast of foam
Saving a family of four
Their Chihuahua and A-frame
Wedding ring rescued from the ashes
Hours after the whole town burned
When you’re headed for a clamp down
It’s sturdy, sleek, reliable
The Robert Mueller of office supplies
Our savior in the darkest times
It keeps things together
Spring-loaded discrete steel
With hair-trigger thin rectangles
Open on one border
Capable of mounting
Monuments of paper
Punching through
To the moon and back
Enough heft and evidence
To haul The Creature from
The Blech Lagoon
Straight to the clinker for life
Stan Lee grade stapler
Villains haven’t a chance
It bites, draws blood
Keeps you on your toes
Look at you, bad man
Sucking the red
From your thumb
Like a little baby
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Michelle Bitting won the 2018 Fischer Poetry Prize, and a fourth collection, Broken Kingdom won the 2018 Catamaran Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2018. Her third collection is The Couple Who Fell to Earth (C & R Press), named to Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2016. She has poems published in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review, Vinyl Poetry, Plume, Diode, Tabula Poetica, Thrush, Raleigh Review, the Paris-American, AJP, Green Mountains Review, and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes, (including Pushcart 2018 and Best of the Net 2018) and recently, The Pablo Neruda, American Literary Review and Tupelo Quarterly poetry contests.
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illustration: anna_croc01