poem
Volume 20, Number 2

corporate


Someone like Christ himself has descended
by Learjet to turn things around.

Curtains in leathery board rooms give way
to desert-light brilliance.

Brand-new suits, smart with know-how,
rise to power in hissing pneumatic tubes.

Technicians are breathless, agendas boil, teams converge,
and jellyfish thinkers go home to astonished spouses.

Why me, why me? What have I done?
Everything, fool, and nothing.

Three whole floors of the building have vanished
across an ocean. Data swell its cubes and corridors.

Are those profits or blackbirds rising in a rapturous helix
from its holy foundations?

Why would one ask? We are saved.


—Richard Swanson