from RECENT TABS 

1

One memorializes 
an intellectual pursuit

Another so unrefreshed it’s by now
infested with ads, forcing me 
to force quit inevitably 

Grateful for IT who shoots
the shit but kindly doesn’t comment

on my history 

(or my memory)

2

White lace, blowing in the wind
Against blue sky, in warmer season
In another country, in the future
If you buy a pair of under-
Wear today

Logging in is hard

A series of riddles
I have to become a hacker just to work
I’m clicking continue, I say​ to my co-worker
Marie. This is unbelievable
This is unbelievable, I repeat
But we both know it’s ordinary and believable
The failed state of the university, held
Together by people who hope they find you well
The suspenseful hot​ ​water boiler, believable.
Brutal fluorescence, believable
The pay as little as $154/month sign–(for what? we joke) tacked to a bulletin board​–believable
I finally engage a search engine to ask my question
It turns out my computer’s wallpaper ​is out of my control

4

Despite modernity, my eyes 
hurt. Outlook’s invented shadows
offer no shade

Waves of tabs accumulate
pale worlds I enter while eating
co-op orange

the juice streams down
two sides of my chin
I harass the keyboard

I’ll harass
the office 

with citrus !

Ariel Yelen is a poet and the author of I Was Working (Princeton University Press, 2024). Her poems have recently been published in Social Text, Makhzin, The New Republic, Copenhagen, and elsewhere. For many years, she’s lived in an old, inconveniently located but kind of special apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn, down the street from the Record Shop, where she recently taught a poetry workshop on the political poem.