mAN28*

The man in the hat looked at the man with the shamble leg and frowned, ‘never the soup’. The man with the shamble leg sighed, his lips tightening like sail thread, and said, ‘Jell-O’s better than soup anyways, soups too hot, anyways’. He swung his left leg over his right leg and pushed his plate across the tabletop, his eyes two specks of watery garnet. ‘Fritters’, said the man with the shamble leg, ‘corn fritters.’ ‘Pocked,’ said the man in the hat. ‘Yes’, replied the shamble legged man, mocked with corn’. ‘Pocked,’ added the hat man, ‘not mocked’. ‘Pocked with mocked corn’, said the shamble legged man, ‘pock mocked with yellow corn, yes, corn’, he said, ‘yellow mocked pocked corn, fritters, corn fritters’. “I see’, said the hat man, ‘yes, I see. Pock mocked with corn, fritters of mocked pocked corn.’ ‘Fritters, yes,’ said the legged man. ‘I hear you,’ said the man in the hat, ‘loud and clear.’ ‘As a bell’, added the shambled man. ‘Pealing and pinging and chiming’, said the man in the hat man. ‘You want your soup?’ asked the shamble leg man. ‘Jell-O,’ replied the man in the hat, ‘not the soup, never the soup.’ ‘Like a bell,’ said the shamble leg man, ‘like a chiming, pealing pinging bell.’ ‘You are welcome to the fritters,’ said the man in the hat. ‘Pocked with mock corn,’ added the shamble leg man. ‘Mocked with pocked corn, yes,’ said the man in the hat. ‘Corn fritters, yes, never the soup,’ said the shamble leg man. The shamble leg man swung his right leg over is left leg and sighed, ‘always the Jell-O, never the soup’.

The sun is hiding, he thought, holed up in the barrows of a whore’s skirts. The clouds are the sky’s pimps, feathered hats, pigskin eyes, hogsheads.