Magnetic Paper Clips

by Michael McClintock and Johnye Strickland

                a week after

                my coworker’s suicide,

                the sculpture on her desk

                collapses—magnetic paper clips

                that held nothing together

                                Michael Dylan Welch

                                Sammamish, Washington

Michael Dylan Welch’s sculpture of paper clips—something we have all seen and may even have on our own desktops—is turned into a powerful metaphor about the fragility of life, and of individual purpose, in our time.