Gary Powell

Corporate Warriors

We are profiles in likeness

in our gray business attire,

splash of color in our ties,

cell phone whining in our ears.

We have important places to be

as we careen through streets

and airports, teleconference

with peers, interface and meet.

We do it for our families, our companies

and our teams, for the false sense of

security that allows us to sleep through

the night. For the sweet suck of the deal.

We queue up at our cubicles, genuflect

and cross ourselves before the throne

of the corporate prophet, awaiting the

news: merger, acquisition, or divestiture.

And in the CEO’s name we pray:

This stock option is my body

Think of me when you eat.

This red ink is my blood

Think of me when you drink.

We are the gray men, the

hollow men, living in a dead

land, a land stuffed with IOUs

and motherfucking lawyers.

We are the in-between, the rut

and rub on the road from desire

to spasm. We are the gut wrench

of the downward trending Dow.

So:

Give us this day our daily bread, man,

and forgive us our debts, although we

will never forgive our debtors. For

shareholder value is the kingdom

and the power and the glory

and the stick with which

we beat the competition

into submission.

Gary V. Powell, a recovering lawyer, is currently a home chef and all-around handy-man. His fiction can be read in many literary journals including the Thomas Wolfe Review, Carvezine, Fiction Southeast, Atticus Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Best New Writing 2015, and Pisgah Review. His first novel, Lucky Bastard, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing (2012). Two collections of prize-winning and previously-published short stories and flash fiction, Beyond Redemption and Getting Even and Other Stories, were released in 2015 and 2019, respectively.