Jack Skelley, photo by Gary Leonard
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Green Goddess
Who made the salad
Whose tangy vinegar made me wince
Who played pouty Venus to my impudent Caesar
Who taught me to renounce meat
Who flowed forth lubricants
Who performed dark sacraments
Whose tart shrub tangled my tongue
Who with unctuous poses oiled me
Who received my verdant sacrifice
Who, as I reclined panting, poured herself into her dressing
Who lured me to the garden and dragged me into deep greens
Who instructed me on the use of the proper fork
Who inserted an oblong cucumber
Who shredded slender carrot sticks
Whose burning bush consumed the sky god’s timbers, shaking his heavens to the rafters
Who roused me in damp chambers, dousing reasonable fires to consume knowledge raw
Who at the crack of the vernal equinox, broke seasoned bread into bite-sized croutons
Who parted beet-red vestments
Who swelled my painted cave-beast proud and pregnant
Who put me in the red-pepper pink
Whose celestial power I would enviously drink
Who succored me when I lay pallid
Who made the salad
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Jack’s Skelley’s “Green Goddess” appears in his latest collection, Interstellar Theme Park: New and Selected Writing (BlazeVOX books). Other books include: Monsters (Little Caesar Press), Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson (Fred & Barney Press), and Fear of Kathy Acker (Semiotext(e), spring 2023). He is also songwriter and guitarist for psychedelic surf band Lawndale which just released a new album, Twango.
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“Product Placement”—one of nine collages by Erin Alexander for Interstellar Theme Park: New and Selected Writing by Jack Skelley.
OMG. This when I was literally contemplating this evening's salad. Damn good thing I've got some avocadoes for Green Goddess dressing. I am going to print it out to show my almost-too-hale-and-hearty 91 year old beau/dinner partner. The poem is a marvel of word salad in the best salade composee sense! thank you for this brilliant delightfully raunchy poem. OMG. Raunch Dressing? You two have taken the lid off something delicious in my brain--and kitchen--and. . . .
Posted by: clarinda | October 02, 2022 at 01:29 PM
bam!
Posted by: lally | October 02, 2022 at 01:32 PM
I love how we don't quite know at first who the goddess is, or we think it's a goddess, not the dressing (!!), and then we get to this "Who, as I reclined panting, poured herself into her dressing" and the poem sails forward. Great surprises here, both in individual lines and in that turn just mentioned. Great pick!
Posted by: Don Berger | October 02, 2022 at 01:33 PM
Salad daze indeed! Bravo, Jack Shelley for this grand puzzlement and wild flight of a poem and thanks, Terence! Eat your veggies!
Posted by: Bill Nevins | October 02, 2022 at 01:57 PM
Bill: Thanks for the comment. I love my crudité.
Posted by: Terence Winch | October 02, 2022 at 02:36 PM
Thanks all and Terence! Lally you rock forever!!!
Posted by: John J Skelley | October 02, 2022 at 03:14 PM
thanks jack, and vice versa only double
Posted by: lally | October 02, 2022 at 04:35 PM
Green Goddess has a different look now. I love the poem and the accompanying art.
Posted by: Eileen | October 02, 2022 at 06:09 PM
Awesome poem! Going vegan has never been more erotic!
Posted by: Jerome Sala | October 02, 2022 at 06:36 PM
I'm stealing killer lines from you amazing commenters: "Raunch dressing," "word salad" -- guess I'll have to write a sequel.
Posted by: Jack Skelley | October 02, 2022 at 07:37 PM
Dark sacraments, a tart tongue: thank you, Jack Skelley, for more proof that the gods of the erotic and the goddesses of poetry copulate to their mutual satifaction.
Posted by: David Lehman | October 03, 2022 at 06:17 PM
Finally, an ode to salad, the all encompassing. I’ve been waiting for this. It appears I am not alone. Thanks Jack. Thanks Terence.
Posted by: Diane Ward | October 04, 2022 at 12:05 AM
Diane: thanks for the comment.
Posted by: Terence Winch | October 04, 2022 at 09:14 AM
Thank you, David Lehman and Diane Ward!! Hearing from both of you means a lot to me. Thanks Terence for bringing super people together here!!!
Posted by: Jack Skelley | October 04, 2022 at 09:33 AM
Makes me hungry (for love)! Delicious word salad, slyly erotic and mischievously reverent, gently pushing the limits of syntax and wit.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cyphers Wright | October 04, 2022 at 09:49 AM
Jack: You're very welcome.
Posted by: Terence Winch | October 04, 2022 at 02:18 PM
One of the most joyous and sensual poems I've ever read.
Posted by: Phyllis Rosenzweig | October 06, 2022 at 04:02 PM
Phyllis!! :-)
Posted by: Jack Skelley | October 06, 2022 at 09:21 PM