“The SAP Ariba spend management solution portfolio is empowering companies to move faster and spend better. The solutions connect millions of trading partners worldwide to SAP Business Network to enable direct, intelligent connections that redefine how organizations communicate and get work done.” – SAP Ariba website.

1

Ariba, I have failed you again. I have
placed a box fan in front of a cattle fan
and called it ambition. I sent my resume
to the paltry gods and it contained 
a typo, a misplaced “y” or “i” and now
I must cleanse my relevant experience
at the river of the many-headed girlboss.
I asked a career coach 
for a smoke. Ariba, with your four-step approval
process, your sacred ladder, and me,
a mere renter comprised
of trustworthiness scores. I live in terror
of your guided buying,
as it should be.

2

Ariba, you must understand that I lived for years
in a tempest of misremembered Morse code. They refer
to it as the ancient ‘90s. Your origins lie
in a hush of patents, but my eyes
still sting with since-dead neon. I remember
the sign of the hatchery, a cracking egg.
I remember the flamingos, so many, and a wildfire’s worth
of green gas station dinosaurs. A teapot atop
a building. A water tower of painted bees. A green screen
computer with a single blinking cursor. Heretical
childhood. Modus operandi: Midwestern. O Ariba,
we are but public four-year arts majors with flapping fruit bats
for memories. Deliver us from our contract requests,
our blanket orders, too.
We ask this of you, not God.

3

Ariba, an office door slams in the afternoon
light and I cry. If the employee of the month called
eternal suffering a pain point, 
middle management may learn to practice
active listening. List the ailments: 
your upskilled heart, your quiet
quitting soul, your obsession with how even a pandemic
could not finally slow the grind. Label your faults
as a series of rooms: infinite rooms, rooms
for growth, outreach, engagement, and quality assurance.
The Voynich manuscript is now understood 
by no one but Ariba, we know you as a precision 
of timestamped pleas. 

4

Ariba, I wake in the night to pain
everywhere. I think I hear the Earth trying
to dislodge from its orbit. I will not stop
thinking of you, force of habit, fever dream
of process improvement. Ariba, I once ran
from you and saw perfectly rusted mopeds
flit down a gade in Copenhagen. I tasted the crisp 
stars against glow-in-the-dark velvet. 
I understood metaphysics. I had never been
so alarmingly sober. I returned home
to an eviction notice. Ariba, are you 
animal, lamentation, or dream? I am  
but a child at your feet.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson