Mark Fiddes
Office Landscape with Chair
‘Wait, I’ll print it out for you.’
Her hand darts across Van Gogh’s cornfield face
which is her mouse-mat glancing back every day
a little nervously, asking what she had for lunch,
telling her to go and dance in the rye if she can
still recall how to play outside the bedroom,
wondering if she’d like her own portrait painted
sitting on the stern ergonomic chair in the corner
below the poster that yells YOU DON’T HAVE
TO BE MAD TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS!
He suggests she switch off the fluorescent light
because she will see more and further that way:
she may have missed the stars in the photocopier,
blossoms in the in-tray, the jasmine and crickets
drifting through the air-con, the crows nesting
in the waste bin, the haystack in the shredder,
and a window spinning with dusty olive trees.
She double-clicks his rough beard with her mouse.
A grassy rain falls like kisses from the sprinklers
as she types her resignation for the hundredth time.