Pheromonal
by Rob Eckert
Desperado Press is pleased to announce the release of its second chapbook!
Sometimes, when we saunter through the swinging doors of Rob Eckert’s saloon, prepared to order our usual drink (one finger sarsaparilla, three fingers Oklahoma gin), we are greeted with a derisive, “What stinks?” Now, we must admit we are proud to resist the snake-oil admen who wish to sell us “body spray,” “volumizing conditioner,” and “soap” that’s not rendered from animals. Still, we believe we are fastidious about our hygiene, taking our monthly baths, buffing our gold teeth, and waxing our mustaches thusly. This does not prevent the town drunk, Silas W., from pinching his nose like a bear trap whenever we sit nearby.
Yet, there is one lovely woman—young Miss A.—who deliberately seeks us out when we’re half-drunk and pontificating about Manifest Destiny. She sits right next to us and inhales deeply. “I love,” she says, flashing her gingham eyes, “how you smell.”
We are flattered by the attention of this lanky lass, of course. Yet, we are confused. How could someone so repugnant as Silas find us malodorous, while Miss A. inhales our essence like a vial of French air?
A saloonkeeper is a frontier-folks’ philosopher, so we asked Rob. “The attraction is due to pheromones,” he informed us. “Miss A. behaves like a dazzled schoolgirl because of your scent. This chapbook of poems will explain it all.” He then produced a manuscript scribed entirely on the backs of old liquor-bottle labels in an exquisite calligraphy.
Now, we are generally suspicious of poetry written in taverns. It often reeks of rotgut, and is no more fit for publication than William Cullen Bryant is fit to write about the gold standard and its impacts on waterfowl. (That’s two jokes in one, pardners. Look ’em up.)
However, we read “Chlorine.” Then we read “Regarding Ginger.” Then we read “Azalea.” Friends, we didn’t know American poetry could smell so good.
So, we here at the Desperado Press are pleased to offer you, our discriminating olfactorists, Rob Eckert’s chapbook Pheromonal for your snuffing pleasure. Elegantly designed and lavishly illustrated with the best of fin de sičcle line art, Pheromonal is an examination of love’s fickle fragrances, from relationships that reek like rotten eggs to those as fancy as the imported perfume on a dance-hall girl’s underthings. Eckert takes our familiar smells—tar, sweat, soap—and wafts them into a symphony that considers why we crash our bodies into others and into the world. The poems in Pheromonal offer a whiff of whimsy, the scent of sensuality, and a huff of all things holy.
O pioneers, whether you’re waking up and smelling the coffee, stopping to smell the roses, or busily smelling like teen spirit, the library of your nose is woefully abridged without your own copy of Pheromonal. All we’re asking is $6 for a numbered volume or $8 for a signed and lettered volume, which also includes a free copy of Eckert’s postmodern masterwork This is fiction.
Miss A. often tells us: “Life, dearhearts, is sweet.” It is time to seize it with both nostrils flared, ready to inhale it raw.
So order now!