Patrick Flynn Eckenrode

As it turns out, Flynn was neither a first nor a last name.
Here is the whole poem, in all its splendor. Thank you, Michael.

Of All the Epiphenomena You Were My Favorite

It seems like everything nowadays has something to do with eggplant.
Not that I'm against this. I'm a product of it. First, of course, a system was
Erected, which was brash and had lots of thought behind it.
Several of us planned to put an end to it, but we were
Neglected by the wealthier peasantry, who were quite pleased
To see an infrastructure spring up overnight like that. Then
Came the pleasantly cool complications of
Aftermath, which will long be associated with a collapse of the fathers.
Finally, the system produced 'children.' I think that's
What they were called. Others have called them other things and
I would not be the first in a long line to call them pernicious.
They infested us with their systematics and put us on the maps
They were writing. From down there, of course, it all looked very similar
To another system I'd heard of, and I don't doubt that the two
Are related somehow and could probably even be triangulated
With the help of some new third system that is still
In its operative stages and hasn't been translated yet. Alas
For the slowness of language to create the bigness of systems.
We all live in your lack, back to back, castigating our homelands,
Finding for every correspondence something that responds
Inadequately and makes matchsticks of our eggplant
Strictness. Belatedly we recognize our eggplant discoveries,
After years of eating nothing but Cheerios and
Corn-on-the-cob. My daughter likes to say things now like,
Isn't that wildebeest coming too near us father? And when I
Remind her of principles like Zeno's paradox, she just shrugs her shoulders
And gets carried off to the wildebeest festivals, where everyone
seems so 'in the know' all the time. I guess that's youth for you.
It creates boredom out of things you thought were pleasurable,
Like wildebeests and their grazing patterns. But then, of course,
It also fills you with a glow of self-satisfaction that looks a lot,
I'm told, like the glow of self-radiation. So there's another bell jar for you.
It's a variation on the funnel effect that's been setting outside
My window for hours now. Tomorrow I will go to school all day and learn algebra.

To read Patrick Flynn Eckenrode's entire book on PDF, go to:
http://chelagallery.org/portfolio/flynnbook2.pdf