Safe For Work

by Zach Peckham





we’re gurgling in our dreams

homesick priests of flora and fauna mid-dissolve

tautological nomenclatures of inescapable human misery

you’re waking up again

and the meme says you don’t hate Mondays

you hate capitalism

a Garfield joke echoes somewhere

kind of like when it was en vogue to use lasagna to describe oppression

but that’s not it

you’re varying

it is a wavered harrying distance to consider

the sort of space that hurts to talk across

churning inoperable chasm

modulating frequencies of overage-a-underage

challahlujah for this French toast buffet

a clumping network of tunnels running underneath the nausea museum

a new and original way of describing the complete inexorable condition

the absurdity of coke commercials that occur at a snowy north pole

uh oh

someone’s got a case of the Mondays

can’t tell if it’s the Sunday Scaries or the Black Friday Blues, you guys

can’t tell if it’s Happy Humpday or Thirsty Thursday, bro

can’t tell if it’s time to rise and grind or five o’clock somewhere, yo

this weather is intense

more like bong cyclone am I right

max out ‘til you pass out

hashtag poundsign

the residue always more incriminating

than the story that explains it

if you fall asleep it’s best that you do it at the wheel of a self-driving car

rather than in the shameful backward-facing babyseat of a thriving gig economy

you can delete your account if you want

but it might be better to just simply deactivate it

we would like to send you notifications

one way to know that your boss has been online shopping for dominatrix gear

is to have it pop up in your own ad suggestions

when you’re searching for whipped honey

that might be the closest thing to explaining it right

or it could just be the illusion of choice

the deliveries will only sometimes come to the right house but will always be on time

between universes one might spy a plane on which to have a lie down

then burning up on approach





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