Author Notes: philip gordon

The blue SlurpeePuritan author philip gordon explains the presence of Slurpees in his work.I have decided to use this space to talk about the poetic properties of Slurpees. I’ve written a few poems about them, and the profile photo for my Twitter account is me grinning and holding a giant Slurpee. I don’t think I owe any corporate debt to 7-11, though given the opportunity, I’d be happy to become the first official poet laureate of convenience food. That said, I think Slurpees are the fertile proving ground of poetic conventions. I wrote a tweet a while ago that said something along the lines of “the sound your straw makes when you move it to a new place in your Slurpee and find air; this is god reminding us we are human”. That’s one example, but there are a few more.In my poem “it’s fun if you pronounce it phonetically,” I talk, amongst other things, about simple moments of poetry in everyday actions. I muse somewhat about the act of drinking a Slurpee in the cold being an unquantifiable resource of beauty, and I stand by that. I mean, ostensibly, whoever runs 7-11 as a franchise (Chicago, Illinois native Joseph DePinto, according to the Internet) might theoretically put a stop on the production of Slurpees world-wide (Winnipeg wouldn’t be very impressed with that—did you know that Winnipeg is the Slurpee capital of the world?), but barring that, human ingenuity and the thirst for delicious cola-flavoured ice and sugar will continue to spawn drinkable slush for all foreseeable eternity. I wrote this poem as an effort to encapsulate the contrast of that juxtaposition of two different kinds of cold: the indifference of the world’s self-adjusting temperature, and the man-made delicious artifice of Slurpees.Another poem I wrote about Slurpees (yet to be published, entitled “7-11 slurpee run,” written somewhat in the vein of William Carlos Williams) had something to say about the sublime essence that each little sip of that flavoured slush contains. In particular, there was a Slurpee flavour available at my local convenience store (they’re right across the street, which probably accounts for why some of my inspiration is based on junk-food and energy drinks) that boasted containing a robust amount of caffeine. It also helped that it was blue and delicious—worth noting that I single out the colour ‘blue’ because I’ve had a long-standing hypothesis that Slurpees, more than any other food or beverage, are capable of representing the purest distillation of any colour’s flavour in essence. A blue Slurpee doesn’t just taste like one thing or another: it is the essence of blue, the purest taste in representative, consumable form, that we as humans are capable of possessing. Further discussion on the nature of colours and their flavours (note my commitment to Canadian Literature by including ‘u’s in both those words) mulls in my head on the subject of blue gummy sharks, and blue raspberry push-pops.Ultimately, I think the most profound thing to say about Slurpees is that for me, they’ve always been a manifestation of pure happiness; struggling with depression my entire life, I’ve seldom found a state of mind, even in the bleakest depths of my misery and self-loathing, where a Slurpee didn’t cheer me up somewhat. And, when I’m in the right mood (or riding high on a cocktail of antidepressants prescribed by my doctor last year, which finally pulled me out of my life-long slump of melancholy and, as a result, is probably responsible for my writing or being published), Slurpees fill me with a positively tangible ebullience, as if every sip is a taste of the world in which truth and joy exists, and I’m privy to it only by virtue of the plastic cup dripping with condensation which I happen to be holding. philip gordon is a creative writing student from Vancouver Island, recipient of the 2014 Kevin Roberts Poetry Award, and an editor of the literary magazines Ash Tree Journal and Text (launching in September, 2014). His work has been published in Wax Poetry and Art Magazine, Potluckmag, Chrysanthemum, Portal, Passion Poetry, The YOLO Pages, and a few other places. philip is a romantic dork, lover of shades, and proponent of the Oxford Comma. He can be stalked at twitter.com/greymusic_ and grey-music.tumblr.com.