Saturday, November 29, 2008

Treacle Sweet

Dos Campos Deus sisters from Los Paso Los Pesos distilled treacle sweet wine from apple skins and sour bulbar, the sourness hard-pressed from the skins with a hand-cranked churn. The sisters slept in a bunkhouse with four cots and four billycans, one for each of the four sisters. Mortimer Gall worked for the Dressers Meat Packing Co. where he was in charge of headcheese and unsavory viands. The Dressers Meat Packing Co. was in business with the Dos Campos Deus sisters (from Los Paso Los Pesos), the sisters providing the Dressers Meat Packing Co. with treacle sweet wine, the Dressers Meat Packing Co. supplying the sisters with viands and headcheese.

It was Mortimer Gall’s job to ensure that the Dos Campos Deus sisters met their obligation, and if they didn’t, to cajole and sweet-talk them into it, something he did more oft than not as the sisters had no mind for business or quibbling. The Liepaja Stepbrothers (of Latvia) were in cahoots with the Kista Brothers (of Stockholms Lan) who were in cahoots with the Jacosta Bollocks Sisters, who were in cahoots with the Helsinki beggar who was in cahoots with Dos Campos Deus sisters who, not caring a tinker’s cuss about forthrightness, were in cahoots with Mortimer Gall, who’s job it was to cajole and sweet-talk them into fulfilling their obligation to the Dressers Meat Packing Co., where he was the head of headcheese and unsavory viands.

When she was a girl Lela’s grandmamma told her about Dos Campos Deus sisters and how they stole little girls and put them to work in their distillery. She said that when the little girls got too frail and weakly the sisters sold them to Mortimer Gall, who put them to work cleaning the floor of the slaughterhouse. Those girls who were fortunate enough to sneaked away told tales about pins the size of railroad ties and men with massive heads and droopy eyes chiseling away at cows’ heads with cross-saws and cleavers. Lela promised she wouldn’t stray too far from the house, her grandmamma cautioning her against wearing pretty dresses and high-heel shoes, as Dos Campos Deus sisters fancied treacle sweet things and unbridled flesh. In the town of Bury Saint Edmunds, behind the Taegu-jikhalsi Apothecary, the Daegu sisters sold scented handkerchiefs and silky gloves, the sisters singing the claims of sweet smelling toilet water and calf-soft leather. Lela never went out when the sky looked like it would rain, not wanting to ruin her favorite shoes or get splashed by a wayward listing oxcart or a bicycle thief.

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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