Popchips™
Not baked, not fried, but a third option, the back of the bag promises in relentlessly uncapitalized letters. The chip of the future. Something is done to potatoes to make them into “what amounts to grains of rice or kernels of corn” (quoth www.popchips.com, which is so hip that its FAQ stands not for Frequently Asked but for Frankly Answered Questions.) Then these kernel analogues are massively pressurized and heated until they pop, in a manner similar to the vegetable they imitate. I did not like them. They tasted like salted bag. They tasted like vinegary Styrofoam. I thought I would write a reactionary poem in which I, full of chip conservatism, sang the praises of good old-fashioned fried chips. Doritos. Ruffles. Frito-Lay, the Enemy. But I know that these chips are killing people. They are full of killing oil.
The future is so confusing. Maybe that’s how it is going to be. Maybe Popchips™ are just a swimming teacher, fat and bearded and in a Speedo, who pulls you out onto the tile, spluttering and dripping. He is saying no niceties. Your arms are flailing in the air as you bite down onto a towel, flat and chemical, restricting your ability to breathe, and your teeth move, and move, and your eyes water as you find comfort.
Baby Ruth
Selling my hour’s pay
down the silver chute
of a blank-faced vendor
wait for your drop
o manna from Machine
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Warm secrets in shell casings
salty.
Melt them with your tongue
or circumnavigate by teeth
Pepperoni Pizza, Hamburger, Rasberry Cream Cheese Bread
I had missed you, Stevenson Dining Hall,
thick cranberry-cocktail syrup electrocharging my veins,
pastry slabs stacked like bricks,
cooling pepperoni and congealed cheese by the thin mouthful,
teeth closing down
on processed animal flesh
Baked Pretzel with Nutritional Yeast Sauce, Apple Crisp and White Bean/Carrot Stew
The physiology of angels is such: the great majority of angels have one wing, and this wing is near their hearts. There is only one feather in this wing. Many angels have two-feathered wings. Each feather spins endlessly. Some angels have greater wings, of many feathers, farther and farther away from their hearts, and though no wing can have more than eight spinning feathers in it, an angel may have any number of wings.
Humans were made to contemplate the angels, and to move them about. When humans put the angels of pretzels together with the angels of Nutritional Yeast Sauce, it is then that even God laughs, and shakes his head and says “What a Thursday.”
Bagel, Rice w/Lentil and Kale Lunch
There I sit on the couch
untangling their mysteries,
a dim iTouch photograph
my only guide
Already I can envision the plate
passing on the conveyor belt
beyond the curtains of memory
Can I recover nothing?
The locusts of doubt
are pillaging the ripe corn of thought!
I perceive no way
out –
Wait!
There is a bag of carrots on the table.
I eat a carrot.
Single Marshmallow (A Short)
INT. SCI-FI HALL – EVENING
Matt brandishes a large marshmallow gun.
MATT:
Hey, does anybody want a marshmallow?
Eli raises his hand.
A single shot is heard.
Co-op Lunch (Tofu)
“Like the origins of cheese and butter, the exact origin of tofu production may never be known or proven.” -Wikipedia
O Nameless Tofu Originator
you are more immortal than any of us are going to be.
Were you a prehistorical genius, experimenting rigorously over many years?
(different combinations of bean curd, salt, etcetera).
Or was it blind luck?
like the Chinese emperor who was boiling water outside, only to have a leaf fall in it
and invent tea. Perhaps I should stay home all day
mixing, stirring.
4 A.M Candy (Sour Patch Kids)
We could live like this.
munch
chew
red
blue
If you want to measure time
do it like this.
these will
Testify
for
our
hours.
