[Our tremendous friend, Steven Zultanski, is back for another visit.]
Six Poems About Pringles
Touched by a Pringle
Touched by a Sour Cream & Onion Pringle
Touched by a Pizza Pringle
Touched by a Spicy Guacamole Pringle
Touched by a Jalapeño Pringle
Touched by a Barbeque Pringle
Touched by a Loaded Baked Potato Pringle
Touched by a Ranch Pringle
Touched by a Cheddar Cheese Pringle
Touched by a Original Pringle
Touched by a Bacon Ranch Pringle
Touched by a Salt & Vinegar Pringle
Pringles & Demons
Loaded Baked Potato Pringles & Demons
Salt & Vinegar Pringles & & Demons
Bacon Ranch Pringles & Demons
Ranch Pringles & Demons
Cheddar Cheese Pringles & Demons
Pizza Pringles & Demons
Spicy Guacamole Pringles & Demons
Sour Cream & Onion Pringles & Demons
Jalapeño Pringles & Demons
Barbeque Pringles & Demons
Original Pringles & Demons
Earth Pringle
Earth Jalapeño Pringle
Earth Ranch Pringle
Earth Sour Cream & Onion Pringle
Earth Bacon Ranch Pringle
Earth Salt & Vinegar Pringle
Earth Pizza Pringle
Earth Cheddar Cheese Pringle
Earth Loaded Baked Potato Pringle
Earth Spicy Guacamole Pringle
Earth Original Pringle
Earth Barbeque Pringle
Pringleina Jolie
Bacon Ranch Pringleina Jolie
Jalapeño Pringleina Jolie
Pizza Pringleina Jolie
Barbeque Pringleina Jolie
Cheddar Cheese Pringleina Jolie
Original Pringleina Jolie
Ranch Pringleina Jolie
Loaded Baked Potato Pringleina Jolie
Spicy Guacamole Pringleina Jolie
Sour Cream & Onion Pringleina Jolie
Salt & Vinegar Pringleina Jolie
Pringle of Death
Salt & Vinegar Pringle of Death
Barbeque Pringle of Death
Cheddar Cheese Pringle of Death
Spicy Guacamole Pringle of Death
Loaded Baked Potato Pringle of Death
Bacon Ranch Pringle of Death
Pizza Pringle of Death
Sour Cream & Onion Pringle of Death
Ranch Pringle of Death
Original Pringle of Death
Jalapeño Pringle of Death
Every Times a Bell Rings, A Pringle Gets Its Wings.
Every time a bell rings, an Original Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Jalapeño Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Bacon Ranch Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Ranch Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Barbeque Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Loaded Baked Potato Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Salt & Vinegar Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Sour Cream & Onion Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Cheddar Cheese Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Pizza Pringle gets its wings.
Every time a bell rings, a Spicy Guacamole Pringle gets its wings.
Sometimes He Wore a Shroud About His Head and Neck. Sometimes He Pretended to Weep: Richard Froude
[In another edition of "It Came from Denver," Seth Landman points us toward the writings of Richard Froude. In Seth's own words, "I'm sort of hazed on codeine because of strep throat and have been having a tough time thinking today, but I feel that I should say that Richard is one of my favorite people in the whole state of Colorado."
Richard is, most recently, the author of The History of Zero (Candle Aria, 2008). With Erik Anderson and Anne Waldman he co-edits the mail art magazine Thuggery & Grace.
In Richard's words, "This is an excerpt from a project called Fabric...I was interested in how things move between dream and waking life and back...you can read more excerpts from the project in recent issues of Bombay Gin, Tarpaulin Sky and Pageboy, or online at Parcel and Conjunctions.]
Oceanography #2 (from FABRIC)
_ _ _
From the road it could be a power station, a postmodern cathedral where they will feed us? But it is neither: the abattoir that serves villages all the way from the river to the edge of the woods. This, because we are so hungry, and as Jackie so likes to point out, is our lady fortune in disguise.
My job is to cart the disembodied heads of lambs from the refuse pile to the incinerator in a metal wheelbarrow. I wear a rubber apron and thick black gloves. Jackie says this proximity to death is just what we need but he doesn’t say why we need it. I am more disturbed by our proximity to youth. How close to its birth does a lamb need to be slaughtered to still be considered a lamb?
_ _ _
In the house where we learnt music there was a green staircase where ghosts were. The door to the green staircase had no lock but we had been told by our teachers not to open it. At the top of the staircase was a green room with high set windows and old schooldesks. I didn’t see a ghost in the room. I saw an open wardrobe and old clothes spilt out onto the desks. A black top hat, a cloak with red lining, white linens.
The next day a man came. He could recite the Gospel of John from memory so we sat in rows in the assembly hall. Sometimes he wore a shroud about his head and neck. Sometimes he pretended to weep. I don’t remember much of the Gospel of John, just the man standing at the front of the stage shouting ‘Lazarus! Come forward!’ It was 12 years later, in the house where Alfred died that I learned how I could talk to ghosts.
_ _ _
In Page, Arizona, on a street of eight different churches, a car dealership rises where the town fades back into the desert. With the purchase of a new vehicle comes a free goat. But those aren’t goats. They are lambs. They are in a small pen on the highway side of the property. There are balloons that mark them there and a banner. Free lambs. And they are alive. This morning I saw a fox running through traffic on 6th Avenue at Clarkson. Every evening we eat offal except Tuesdays when we walk through the snow to Giotto’s house.
He fries whitebait in goose lard on his one-ring stove. Once he served us tiny black shrimp he’d caught at the docks with a syringe, a length of carpenter’s twine and a net he claimed to have woven from hair. The next morning Jackie sat doubled in the corner of the slaughterhouse vomiting blood into a general issue blue bucket. Some of the others thought this was funny. The floor that we work on, the main floor, they call it the ‘blood flats.’
They are driving to the city tonight. A man has come to talk about God and reptiles. I wonder if this is the city we saw from the road, months ago when we were hungry. Jackie tells me a dream he had as a child: I sell everything I own and walk into the woods. I build a house inside an oak tree. Life becomes acorns and silence.
_ _ _
Dear Gretl: I know that an American book is a book of movement. I know that movement is only seldom accompanied by silence. On her first night in the hospital, Marjorie heard a heart monitor flatline. It was the heart monitor of a woman two beds down on the opposite side of the ward. This is the ward to which I always return.
Marjorie had thought she was dying. But it was the woman opposite who was dying. What disturbed her most was that she could feel no seams as she passed between worlds. Dying felt exactly the same as being alive.
In the morning a man came to consecrate the space that the woman had left. He wore a black top hat and a cloak. He chanted prayers in a language that neither of us knew. Marjorie said that foreign languages could be our secret lives. The man shook ashes over the bed. When he left, I asked Marjorie if she wanted anything from the canteen. The menu was a blackboard and the prices were written with yellow chalk. I didn’t eat anything. I just stared at the blackboard. Dear Gretl: This is the tariff that I know by heart.
_ _ _
Soon we will leave the slaughterhouse. Giotto told us of poppy fields that surround the city. Near the hospital, closer to the water, is the church of Our Lady Star of the Sea. In the park opposite is a miniature golf course that reproduces the various landmarks of the harbor. Here is the lifeboat. The guildhall. The helter skelter and lighthouse. It costs 25 pence to walk to the end of the pier but the helter skelter is free if you don’t mind the queue. Before you climb the stairs a man will give you a mat woven from sackcloth. The causeway to the lighthouse is submerged at high tide. Check the times before you leave. Be careful. Check the tides.
Will we meet ghosts on our journey?
Yes.
Should we call our journey a pilgrimage?
A ghost is an impossible literature.
Contained in each unsatisfactory moment is the promise of the next.
Whenever I try to transcribe this conversation, I end up rewriting our story.
A cloud, small as a man’s hand, is rising from the sea.
Richard is, most recently, the author of The History of Zero (Candle Aria, 2008). With Erik Anderson and Anne Waldman he co-edits the mail art magazine Thuggery & Grace.
In Richard's words, "This is an excerpt from a project called Fabric...I was interested in how things move between dream and waking life and back...you can read more excerpts from the project in recent issues of Bombay Gin, Tarpaulin Sky and Pageboy, or online at Parcel and Conjunctions.]
Oceanography #2 (from FABRIC)
_ _ _
From the road it could be a power station, a postmodern cathedral where they will feed us? But it is neither: the abattoir that serves villages all the way from the river to the edge of the woods. This, because we are so hungry, and as Jackie so likes to point out, is our lady fortune in disguise.
My job is to cart the disembodied heads of lambs from the refuse pile to the incinerator in a metal wheelbarrow. I wear a rubber apron and thick black gloves. Jackie says this proximity to death is just what we need but he doesn’t say why we need it. I am more disturbed by our proximity to youth. How close to its birth does a lamb need to be slaughtered to still be considered a lamb?
_ _ _
In the house where we learnt music there was a green staircase where ghosts were. The door to the green staircase had no lock but we had been told by our teachers not to open it. At the top of the staircase was a green room with high set windows and old schooldesks. I didn’t see a ghost in the room. I saw an open wardrobe and old clothes spilt out onto the desks. A black top hat, a cloak with red lining, white linens.
The next day a man came. He could recite the Gospel of John from memory so we sat in rows in the assembly hall. Sometimes he wore a shroud about his head and neck. Sometimes he pretended to weep. I don’t remember much of the Gospel of John, just the man standing at the front of the stage shouting ‘Lazarus! Come forward!’ It was 12 years later, in the house where Alfred died that I learned how I could talk to ghosts.
_ _ _
In Page, Arizona, on a street of eight different churches, a car dealership rises where the town fades back into the desert. With the purchase of a new vehicle comes a free goat. But those aren’t goats. They are lambs. They are in a small pen on the highway side of the property. There are balloons that mark them there and a banner. Free lambs. And they are alive. This morning I saw a fox running through traffic on 6th Avenue at Clarkson. Every evening we eat offal except Tuesdays when we walk through the snow to Giotto’s house.
He fries whitebait in goose lard on his one-ring stove. Once he served us tiny black shrimp he’d caught at the docks with a syringe, a length of carpenter’s twine and a net he claimed to have woven from hair. The next morning Jackie sat doubled in the corner of the slaughterhouse vomiting blood into a general issue blue bucket. Some of the others thought this was funny. The floor that we work on, the main floor, they call it the ‘blood flats.’
They are driving to the city tonight. A man has come to talk about God and reptiles. I wonder if this is the city we saw from the road, months ago when we were hungry. Jackie tells me a dream he had as a child: I sell everything I own and walk into the woods. I build a house inside an oak tree. Life becomes acorns and silence.
_ _ _
Dear Gretl: I know that an American book is a book of movement. I know that movement is only seldom accompanied by silence. On her first night in the hospital, Marjorie heard a heart monitor flatline. It was the heart monitor of a woman two beds down on the opposite side of the ward. This is the ward to which I always return.
Marjorie had thought she was dying. But it was the woman opposite who was dying. What disturbed her most was that she could feel no seams as she passed between worlds. Dying felt exactly the same as being alive.
In the morning a man came to consecrate the space that the woman had left. He wore a black top hat and a cloak. He chanted prayers in a language that neither of us knew. Marjorie said that foreign languages could be our secret lives. The man shook ashes over the bed. When he left, I asked Marjorie if she wanted anything from the canteen. The menu was a blackboard and the prices were written with yellow chalk. I didn’t eat anything. I just stared at the blackboard. Dear Gretl: This is the tariff that I know by heart.
_ _ _
Soon we will leave the slaughterhouse. Giotto told us of poppy fields that surround the city. Near the hospital, closer to the water, is the church of Our Lady Star of the Sea. In the park opposite is a miniature golf course that reproduces the various landmarks of the harbor. Here is the lifeboat. The guildhall. The helter skelter and lighthouse. It costs 25 pence to walk to the end of the pier but the helter skelter is free if you don’t mind the queue. Before you climb the stairs a man will give you a mat woven from sackcloth. The causeway to the lighthouse is submerged at high tide. Check the times before you leave. Be careful. Check the tides.
Will we meet ghosts on our journey?
Yes.
Should we call our journey a pilgrimage?
A ghost is an impossible literature.
Contained in each unsatisfactory moment is the promise of the next.
Whenever I try to transcribe this conversation, I end up rewriting our story.
A cloud, small as a man’s hand, is rising from the sea.
The Problem is that Astronauts are Sexually Insecure: A Story by Joanna Ruocco
[Inshallah, the first in a series of Denver-based suggestions from that manly man, Seth Landman. Please meet Joanna Ruocco. Joanna's novel The Mothering Coven came out last year on Ellipsis Press, and her short story collection, Man's Companions, is coming out this year from Tarpaulin Sky.
In Seth's own words, "Joanna is well versed in elixirs and has many, many friends." Without further ado...]
Dog
It’s not the zero gravity that gets him off. He’s done it, in zero gravity, maybe a thousand times, maybe more times. He doesn’t keep track. Astronauts don’t notch their belts. Astronaut suits need to stay airtight. Notches are hazardous for astronauts. Also, astronauts are gentlemen.
“Zero gravity fucking is just fucking,” he says, but I have to disagree. For me, zero gravity fucking is definitely zero gravity fucking.
We were fucking in zero gravity.
“Wow,” I said.
“This is amazing,” I said.
“You’re amazing,” he said, like a gentleman, to reciprocate, as if by “this” I had actually meant him. He’s not completely crazy. “This is amazing” may very well mean “you are amazing,” because sometimes people are imprecise or inhibited with language while fucking. I didn’t mean he was amazing, though. I meant the zero gravity was amazing. I didn’t mean that he wasn’t amazing, but it was impossible to tell. I will either have to do it with him in zero gravity a thousand times so that the novelty of zero gravity wears off or I will have to do it with him in nonzero gravity, in regular gravity, in a bed. Another option is that he gives me the key to the zero gravity room and I bring some one else into the zero gravity room. Then I fuck this other person, in zero gravity. He doesn’t seem to like any of these options. He seems unhappy. I think he has a complex about fucking.
“We can just fuck occasionally,” I say. “In zero gravity.”
“You’d like that,” he says.
“Of course,” I say.
“The zero gravity,” he says. “You’d like that.”
“Right,” I say. Then I say, “I like you too.”
The problem is that astronauts are sexually insecure. I want to give him some advice.
“Look,” I want to say, “if you’re so indifferent to zero gravity just forget about it as an option, for fucking.” There’d be no confusion—do we have good chemistry, is it just the zero gravity, etc. Problem solved. Of course, women might not fuck him anymore. I might not fuck him. He might be ruining a perfectly good thing. That’s why I try to not to take advice.
In Seth's own words, "Joanna is well versed in elixirs and has many, many friends." Without further ado...]
Dog
It’s not the zero gravity that gets him off. He’s done it, in zero gravity, maybe a thousand times, maybe more times. He doesn’t keep track. Astronauts don’t notch their belts. Astronaut suits need to stay airtight. Notches are hazardous for astronauts. Also, astronauts are gentlemen.
“Zero gravity fucking is just fucking,” he says, but I have to disagree. For me, zero gravity fucking is definitely zero gravity fucking.
We were fucking in zero gravity.
“Wow,” I said.
“This is amazing,” I said.
“You’re amazing,” he said, like a gentleman, to reciprocate, as if by “this” I had actually meant him. He’s not completely crazy. “This is amazing” may very well mean “you are amazing,” because sometimes people are imprecise or inhibited with language while fucking. I didn’t mean he was amazing, though. I meant the zero gravity was amazing. I didn’t mean that he wasn’t amazing, but it was impossible to tell. I will either have to do it with him in zero gravity a thousand times so that the novelty of zero gravity wears off or I will have to do it with him in nonzero gravity, in regular gravity, in a bed. Another option is that he gives me the key to the zero gravity room and I bring some one else into the zero gravity room. Then I fuck this other person, in zero gravity. He doesn’t seem to like any of these options. He seems unhappy. I think he has a complex about fucking.
“We can just fuck occasionally,” I say. “In zero gravity.”
“You’d like that,” he says.
“Of course,” I say.
“The zero gravity,” he says. “You’d like that.”
“Right,” I say. Then I say, “I like you too.”
The problem is that astronauts are sexually insecure. I want to give him some advice.
“Look,” I want to say, “if you’re so indifferent to zero gravity just forget about it as an option, for fucking.” There’d be no confusion—do we have good chemistry, is it just the zero gravity, etc. Problem solved. Of course, women might not fuck him anymore. I might not fuck him. He might be ruining a perfectly good thing. That’s why I try to not to take advice.
Break the Calf’s Neck By the River: Seth Parker
[Here is a deep pocket's worth of Seth Parker. Editor of the Skein journal...a long-lifed, hand-bound publication. Visit him in Marietta, Georgia, off of Lower Roswell Road.]
SUNG MOUNTAIN
I’m a bed that cried
I can see the starter-butt
darling ass
I can’t complain that the pain in a horror
walkin’ in the seashine
darling ass long as Hugo
And what do I need?
To know
-----
Bits of red hives
alone at this lonely babe-lock
no one’s too Blaine
there’s a fight reported in the wash-drive
his MoonPie, and the roaring
it saw some powers
bland and red kimono
this wild thing on the rung
daughter-butt
-----
My days, a lawn
I went to found
I’d replant the garden wall
wear an unlit kilt
an ancient mane
bathe alive in roil and wonder
the bountied labor
every man in swich licouer
common through it all
who could complete the river Seine?
memory rush over me now I step into the Sun
INTERVENING MYTH
Break the calf’s neck
by the river, the gleanings
of a vineyard
The tunnels bust with
mirrors of a hundred bronzes
Alpine, erogenous
vista, remark this door of smoke
I guide my fear past the glass Her
On a cold damp night
you misjudge glass for
genuine flesh
[Untitled]
Lo-fi lonely sai
password white
now you move with the Thai
white nights
[Untitled]
The smiling face is a frown, can bring
love within a mule
Bride-days ahead,
bitter tears course through life
because life is OK
A smiling face you don’t have to see
wears a Christmas chain
SESTET
The tragic mind is breaking apart
and the hind is melted
becoming, who knows?, beheaded by light
everyone gets fluid in the dusk
and they break up with their girlfriends
every day
SUNG MOUNTAIN
I’m a bed that cried
I can see the starter-butt
darling ass
I can’t complain that the pain in a horror
walkin’ in the seashine
darling ass long as Hugo
And what do I need?
To know
-----
Bits of red hives
alone at this lonely babe-lock
no one’s too Blaine
there’s a fight reported in the wash-drive
his MoonPie, and the roaring
it saw some powers
bland and red kimono
this wild thing on the rung
daughter-butt
-----
My days, a lawn
I went to found
I’d replant the garden wall
wear an unlit kilt
an ancient mane
bathe alive in roil and wonder
the bountied labor
every man in swich licouer
common through it all
who could complete the river Seine?
memory rush over me now I step into the Sun
INTERVENING MYTH
Break the calf’s neck
by the river, the gleanings
of a vineyard
The tunnels bust with
mirrors of a hundred bronzes
Alpine, erogenous
vista, remark this door of smoke
I guide my fear past the glass Her
On a cold damp night
you misjudge glass for
genuine flesh
[Untitled]
Lo-fi lonely sai
password white
now you move with the Thai
white nights
[Untitled]
The smiling face is a frown, can bring
love within a mule
Bride-days ahead,
bitter tears course through life
because life is OK
A smiling face you don’t have to see
wears a Christmas chain
SESTET
The tragic mind is breaking apart
and the hind is melted
becoming, who knows?, beheaded by light
everyone gets fluid in the dusk
and they break up with their girlfriends
every day
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