Nathaniel Krenkel – PSYCHOPOMP.COM https://psychopomp.com Just another WordPress site Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:34:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 https://psychopomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/cropped-gold-P-square-32x32.png Nathaniel Krenkel – PSYCHOPOMP.COM https://psychopomp.com 32 32 Toaster Poem https://psychopomp.com/deadlands/issue-17/toaster/ Thu, 13 Oct 2022 14:27:41 +0000 https://psychopomp.com/?p=3002663 Philosophy and Poetry are not bedfellows
They are beds.
The toaster is a marvelous thing.
How many dead toasters fill the land?
A billion? A gazillion?
Poppa John Mistic walks into a bar
He orders a pint.
Slowly, he dips his beard into the glass.
Donut stout. Wax and suds.
The word STINK is tattooed to his neck
A plane crashes into his neck
When the EMTs arrives, they find his neck
Smelling like booze and potato starch
And German chocolate
The EMT shouts out to no one in particular,
“TOAST IS READY.”
But no one looks up, no one even Hummphs.
I don’t understand why poets
Don’t insult more people
Imagine:
Ginsberg wagging his ribbon cock
At the banality of Elon Musk
Imagine Kenneth Patchen pointing out
How his face floats in formaldehyde
Imagine Elizabeth Bishop
Drowning Betsy DeVos in a tide pool on North Haven
Before she dusts the broken shells from her palms
And pours herself a drink.
Maybe we’re just too numbly polite and afraid
That the submissions page will algorithm us
Into auto-We Receive So Much, though I’m sure
Marianne Moore wouldn’t hesitate to tell Susan Collins
She’s a soft fascist, a chalky coward, a boring tool, a theocratic
lump,
footnoted
to death.
 

Nathaniel Krenkel has lived in Kansas, Michigan, Utah, Glasgow Scotland, New York City and the Hudson Valley. He now lives, with his wife and two children, in Portland and North Haven, Maine. He owns the record label Team Love, and  is currently working on a sci-fi children’s book series. 

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