George Witte

George Witte Poems

George Witte Biography

George Witte is the author of An Abundance of Caution (Unbound Edition Press,2023) , Does She Have a Name? (NYQ Books,2014) , Deniability (Orchises Press,2009) and The Apparitioners (Three Rail Press,2005) . His work has appeared widely in journals and in several anthologies, including The Best American Poetry. He received Poetry's Frederick Bock Prize for a group of poems, and a fellowship from the New Jersey Council for the Arts/Department of State. He lives with his family in Ridgewood, New Jersey.)

The Best Poem Of George Witte

There Was An Old Lady

Remember that shopkeeper witnesses named,
passports and cellphones apparently stolen?
He looked like he'd swallowed a fly when informed
Geneva procedure might hurt just a little.
The thing about spiders: you wriggle and jiggle
until they come crawling with pretext for action,
table your issue for further consumption
and leave you encrypted, gibberish data
in parallel networks no bird can divine
or destroy, even with cadenced munitions.
Night vision goggles unclouded by doubt
the cat surveils persons of marginal interest
suspected of nothing but arming the system.
The old lady's fallen and dialed nine one one.
Her pit bull roams howling while villagers march,
sickles and pitchforks aloft in the torchlight,
milk cow and carthorse conscripted for meat.
That shopkeeper's next if he doesn't confess.


From Deniability (Orchises Press,2009)

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