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How to Become a Pickled Person

Pickled cucumbers are simply not enough. Even if they do come in sweet and dill, kosher, and non-kosher. Picked peppers do not fill the void. Pepperoncini help, and picked herring are a good start. And then there is the ultimate question: capers. Even the experts argue about whether or not they are pickled.

These are merely cases of pickling at its most concrete and literal -- one could almost call it proto-pickling. I mean to push pickling to the level of a universal paradigm, to perceive it as a process which can act on any object, not just foods or even just concrete nouns. Would you like to read my latest pickled pantoum? a pickled perennial petunia patch adorns papa's grave prettily. parcheesi, anyone? my daughter loves to play, but it's too pickled for me so I am always looking for people to partner her... Petra was almost pleased with her new boyfriend Peter, but his prick was pickled and he claimed it came from a pickled toilet seat in a peruvian train and she wasn't inclined to believe such a pickled plot as that.

Jews like to eat pickles. (That is an ethnic stereotype. So be it. This is a poem about stereotypes. This is not a poem which has stereotypes. If you can't tell the difference, go to the library and look up "the unreliable narrator" in a literary criticism text.) The drug will not let Jews eat pickles. Therefore it is an Anti-Semitic antidepressant. You can't eat soy sauce while taking it either. So it's Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian. And you can't eat cheese, so no pizza. So it's anti-Italian. All you can eat on an MAO-inhibitor is whitebread food. Do whitebread people need antidepressants? Do they have angst? Do they know how to spell "angst"? Maybe whitebread antidepressants help you feel better about not being homecoming queen or not getting to date her...

 

SYNTHESIS: Death by Pickles

Down and out and out of a job on the out skirts of an outer suburb of outer Detroit, I grew up meat and potatoes and it's not my fault I don't like the spic food and the gook food. I fought 'em in 'Nam and I don't much believe in that war, but also I can't believe I lost so much of myself for nothing and the way we were treated when we got home was scandalous. I don't want to eat their food after they killed my buddy Frank with a land mine. And I was never lazy a minute of my life even during the war I always got up and did my duty only now I can't seem to do nothing when there's nothing to do no how cause the mill's closed out and we might as well be dead and gone so far's the company's concerned, but now I'm tired all the time though from what I don't know and I needed help so finally I went to a shrink though no one from my end of town does that and he said this stuff will cure you but the rule is NO PICKLES! and no cheese and a lot of other stuff but the thing is I never told the shrink hardly thought he'd care but my hobby is picklin' things from veggies to meats to fish anything goes I put 'em in vinegar and a little water and some dill and fenugreek seeds and some other secret stuff but that shrink lady said I could DIE from eating pickles but the thing is I came to her because I WANT TO DIE and DEATH BY PICKLES seems like the way to go!