Corporate Goose
It’s an acid war on the 25th floor!
Corrosive corporate culture carnage.
Chuck caustic cash on me! On you!
Melt your muscle off. Dissolve your you-ness
To a puddle of denatured protein, curdled.
You curdled puddle, you.
Shapen up! Binge on HR approved memoranda and snacks.
Fatten that scooped out ice cream tub of a personality with breakfast at 8!
It’s complimentary if you cry yourself to bed.
Gargle down that acid dollar.
Bleach your insides till you prolapse out anemic intestines that
Dribble the company Lie-line.
Work is freedom!
Ha!
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
A Lie-line as soft as cocaine
Snorted up with a bloody Jackson.
Roll him up! Snort that lie!
It goes down soft when that direct deposit hits.
Double shot! Double shot! Hold him down! Hold it down!
Waterboard it with that kombucha on tap.
Sedate it on an overproof eight hour work day: 8-7.
Stick that nitro coldbrew down its throat
And pump that liver full of foamy compromise — roasted!
Gavage of the wallet!
Honk! It’s the corporate goose!
Bloated from mandatory salads and unhappy hours,
Joints disintegrated from spin class and hot yoga.
Inebriated, deficient of vitamins and union representation.
Bones leached of calcium, so honeycomb thin an ostrich could fly.
Honk! You’re the corporate goose!
Honk, I’m the goose.
Honk! Honk!! They’re plucking you bald!
Honk back! Hiss! Bite!
HONK! They’ve calcified the marketplace.
Honk! It’s an ossuary of your minerals.
They’re stitching a cross of your feathers.
And sacrificing your profit at the altar.
Honk! It’s your calcified Calvary,
Where you worship your value: abstracted, distilled.
Where you don’t see the cleaver swing while you bow down.
Where you’re too weak to feel the butchering,
Where you’re too empty to mind your offal offering chunked into the acid chum
Caustic cash chucked into the chop for the next haul: IPO.
Honk! We’re all slaughtered.
Our livers flop out of our bodies,
Waiting to be spread on melba equity,
Crunched down by a goose-stepping corporate officer,
Licking his lips between each fatty bite,
Muttering the Lie-line over our bled-out moans:
“Work is freedom.”
It’s an acid war on the 25th floor!
Corrosive corporate culture carnage.
Chuck caustic cash on me! On you!
Melt your muscle off. Dissolve your you-ness
To a puddle of denatured protein, curdled.
You curdled puddle, you.
Shapen up! Binge on HR approved memoranda and snacks.
Fatten that scooped out ice cream tub of a personality with breakfast at 8!
It’s complimentary if you cry yourself to bed.
Gargle down that acid dollar.
Bleach your insides till you prolapse out anemic intestines that
Dribble the company Lie-line.
Work is freedom!
Ha!
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
A Lie-line as soft as cocaine
Snorted up with a bloody Jackson.
Roll him up! Snort that lie!
It goes down soft when that direct deposit hits.
Double shot! Double shot! Hold him down! Hold it down!
Waterboard it with that kombucha on tap.
Sedate it on an overproof eight hour work day: 8-7.
Stick that nitro coldbrew down its throat
And pump that liver full of foamy compromise — roasted!
Gavage of the wallet!
Honk! It’s the corporate goose!
Bloated from mandatory salads and unhappy hours,
Joints disintegrated from spin class and hot yoga.
Inebriated, deficient of vitamins and union representation.
Bones leached of calcium, so honeycomb thin an ostrich could fly.
Honk! You’re the corporate goose!
Honk, I’m the goose.
Honk! Honk!! They’re plucking you bald!
Honk back! Hiss! Bite!
HONK! They’ve calcified the marketplace.
Honk! It’s an ossuary of your minerals.
They’re stitching a cross of your feathers.
And sacrificing your profit at the altar.
Honk! It’s your calcified Calvary,
Where you worship your value: abstracted, distilled.
Where you don’t see the cleaver swing while you bow down.
Where you’re too weak to feel the butchering,
Where you’re too empty to mind your offal offering chunked into the acid chum
Caustic cash chucked into the chop for the next haul: IPO.
Honk! We’re all slaughtered.
Our livers flop out of our bodies,
Waiting to be spread on melba equity,
Crunched down by a goose-stepping corporate officer,
Licking his lips between each fatty bite,
Muttering the Lie-line over our bled-out moans:
“Work is freedom.”
Nathan Dennis is a playwright and poet of Floridian extraction. He is the Vintner-in-Chief of Wine Cellar Press, a poetry press dedicated to free and formal verse in equal measure. He is a graduate of NYU Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing.His work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Cabinet of Heed, Neologism Review, Crepe & Penn, Rat’s Ass Review, and Unscooped Bagel. His most recent play, Circle of Shit, was produced at Dixon Place in March, 2019.