by Duncan Law
1.
I sit at my standing desk
While my bosses roll out doughy facsimiles of Klimt—
even those fornicating flies, slathered in butter
and ordered to bother me
even my copy-writing co-workers, humming on caffeine
and wild with tendonitis
they’ve learned the fruits of scalability. 
Secretly
I look to the unnecessary croissants—
some call them day-old, I call them kin
defiantly, they stain their parchment sheets
and lounge about in piles of their own dandruff
I too wish to shed reductive titles.
we collude until they are suddenly gone—
the flies and I get back to work
2.
I can take no more
I stand at my standing desk
and yell at the counter
there’s too much ice in my coffee
this Danish is so dry
crust? more like cardboard
their response is immediate:
vegan sandwich, half off
defeated,
I redistribute my distended belly
steamed milk dripping from my chin;
this table isn’t going to bus itself
Duncan Law kayaks competitively, and lives in Berkeley with his wife and three daughters, as far as the neighbors can surmise.
Back to Poetry.
Back to Issue 7.
