A bluest blue sky, a cur’s throw-up, such moribund thoughts. A moorhen crossed the sideways across from the Waymart next to the Sears across from the aqueduct. Legs mistuning, bill waif with sweat, an eyes’-wink off the dashpot. A moorhen is best caught at 27 ½ minutes past the hour (to be precise) and with as little effort as is humanly possible. The Moorish-hen, or moorhen as it is commonly referred to, is a gall and viral pest. Once introduced into a community it is next to impossible to shoo-away; so much so that entire communities, phylum’s and subspecies loose sleep, 27 ½ minutes to be precise.
The man in the hat had a boil, a goiter-sized boil, on the nape of his neck. He tried applying hot compresses and soaves, a mixture of clove-oil and mustard-seed, emulsifiers and poultices, but nothing he did seemed to ease the swelling and redness. The doctor at the walk-in clinic diagnosed the man in the hat with moorhen-edema and wrote him a prescription for antibiotics and a mild sedative. ‘Fucking shit-hens’ he muttered, ‘God’s scourge on man!’
At precisely 24 ½ minutes to twelve the man in the hat wrapped his neck in swaddling-cloth, cinching it taut with a piece of old clothesline, and lay flat on his bed. He waited impatiently for the mild sedative to take effect; eyes pressed closed, jawbone clenched, and began to recite an old traditional Lithuanian folksong he’d learned at the knee of his granddad. It went something like this: Bilbo the Aleman’s son sat at the hostelry bar, the Aleman’s wife, such a jolly fat giggly wife, picking at a loose thread on his saloon-jacket collar, the nape of his neck weeping pus, the scourge of Saint Christos of moorhen, the impatient Saint of boatmen, shit-hens and goiters.
The man in the hat had a boil, a goiter-sized boil, on the nape of his neck. He tried applying hot compresses and soaves, a mixture of clove-oil and mustard-seed, emulsifiers and poultices, but nothing he did seemed to ease the swelling and redness. The doctor at the walk-in clinic diagnosed the man in the hat with moorhen-edema and wrote him a prescription for antibiotics and a mild sedative. ‘Fucking shit-hens’ he muttered, ‘God’s scourge on man!’
At precisely 24 ½ minutes to twelve the man in the hat wrapped his neck in swaddling-cloth, cinching it taut with a piece of old clothesline, and lay flat on his bed. He waited impatiently for the mild sedative to take effect; eyes pressed closed, jawbone clenched, and began to recite an old traditional Lithuanian folksong he’d learned at the knee of his granddad. It went something like this: Bilbo the Aleman’s son sat at the hostelry bar, the Aleman’s wife, such a jolly fat giggly wife, picking at a loose thread on his saloon-jacket collar, the nape of his neck weeping pus, the scourge of Saint Christos of moorhen, the impatient Saint of boatmen, shit-hens and goiters.
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