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Robert Witmer

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 Business 101

 

When I was a kid, I built an ant house. That was before I ever saw one of those ant farm contraptions. I made everything small – the chairs, the tv, the Bible on the end table, even the room where you do number one or number two. After I finished, I showed it to my dad. He kind of laughed and said something about my mom’s goofy sister, Aunt Esther. That night, I put my ant house out on the patio. I kept looking through my bedroom window, waiting to see them arrive. First, just one or two, to check the place out. Then more. Until finally the place was on the map. Of course, we couldn’t let everyone in. We had to be selective, keep an eye on the bottom line. Reputation, after all, is everything.


Robert Witmer is an American who has lived in Tokyo, Japan, for the past 46 years. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, including Lily Poetry Review, The Main Street Rag, Bacopa Literary Review, New Verse News, Parody, Shot Glass Journal, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. His first book of poems, "Finding a Way", was published in 2016. A second book, "Serendipity", a collection of prose poetry pieces and haiku sequences, was published in March 2023.

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