The iconic pop artist experiences a poetic rebirth in “Hope Springs Eternal, or: The Reincarnation of Andy Warhol’s Soul,” Ron Kolm‘s delightfully surreal contribution to our Summer 2017 issue.

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THERE’S A SLIGHT DISTURBANCE
Among the potato chips
In a pink Tupperware bowl
Sitting on a wooden picnic table
At a Baptist prayer meeting
In Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Now this particular disturbance
Is not man made, nor is it
An act of Nature; it is, in fact,
The awakening of Andy Warhol’s
Reincarnated soul.

What the Hell, Andy thinks,
A potato chip? I silk-screened
Monroe for this?
The guys at the Factory
Assured me I’d come back
As the hippest thing possible
But a potato chip?!
Now, it’s nitpicking
In the extreme
But we should note
That Andy Warhol
Returned as a Pringle,
Not as a real potato chip, a detail
That would have delighted him
In his previous incarnation.

The afternoon wears on,
And one by one his companions
Disappear; Lou, Holly, Baby Jane,
Gerard, Viva, and, yes, even
little Edie — until Andy
Is the only chip remaining.

Please let me come back
As a roll of aluminum foil
Next time, he prays,
As the shadow of a large,
Calloused Baptist hand
Blots out the sky above.

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RON KOLM is a founding member of the Unbearables and a contributing editor of Sensitive Skin magazine. He’s the author of The Plastic Factory, Divine Comedy, Suburban Ambush, Duke & Jill, Night Shift, and with Jim Feast, the novel Neo Phobe. He’s had work in Have A NYC 3, Live Mag! and the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Ron’s papers were purchased by the NYU library, where they’ve been cataloged in the Fales Collection as part of the Downtown Writers Group.