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.
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