Weekly Poem: 'Duration'

**By Valerie Nieman** The Swingline Speed Stapler 3 was surplused out of the front office not long before the whole enterprise went belly-up. What a piece of work this is! A Chrysler building, an Eames chair (but humble) polished chrome, matte steel, its rising curves lifted from a Hudson, from the front a sphinx of good order, and each part -- from the cross-hatched footplate to the cracked rubber palm-pad incised with three decorative lines -- my God look what attention to detail and proud of it, patent numbers here, and here, this work of Long Island City New York: decades later the spring is still full of the old zip. A simple machine, to take a bit of wire and bend it back on itself, papers secured at a thwack, or a bulletin board tacked into place with the easy release of the staple arm from a metal catch (made in U.S.A., patented), a more permanent fix than Post-Its. My father passed it along when I headed to college - a reliable tool like the clipboard and mechanical pencil he used on the shop floor ages and states ago. A move here, a move there - I could have stapled maps of the Eastern United States together to trace the routes, the cities where things are made and traded, where I stick for a time, and then (unfastened) lift away.   "Valerie Nieman":http://www.valnieman.com/ is the author of the poetry collection, "Wake Wake Wake" (Press 53, 2006); three novels, "Blood Clay" (Press 53, 2011), "Survivors" (Van Neste Books, 2000) and "Neena Gathering" (Pageant Books, 1988); and a collection of short fiction, "Fidelities" (West Virginia University, 2004). She teaches at North Carolina A&T State University.