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Note on Litterbug

I thought it high time, since rubbish is more common in cityscapes than buttercups and daisies, that litter got treated as honourable additions to flora and fauna. How many litterbug poems I shall write I can’t say. Most of my sequences don’t get past the second item. Here’s the first, about those four plastic O’s which grip the tops of the beer cans into a fourpack. This loopy, plastic creature, when discarded, climbs up at night to cling to a window, where it will foil any burglar who tries to gain entry by cutting circular holes in the glass. If this poem sounds like an Anglo-Saxon riddle that’s not accidental. And the Fourpack Rimholder is itself behind the times; not many burglars these days bother to cut through windows with special tools; a brick is the style.

  

Alan Marshfield

  

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