Friday, November 28, 2008

Taegu-jikhalsi Apothecary

The Waymart sold greatcoats and smallcoats, boots (cobbled from cowhide and rubber), fishmonger sweaters (knit from goats’ wool and hair) and a range of hats, all of which the man in the hat owned or would one day own. From behind the Waymart, hidden in between the dustbins and bailed cardboard, a voice yelled ‘…¡pare eso hollering, por favor!...’ then a second ‘…einde dat dat, tevreden schreeuwt!...’ and a third ‘…stoppen sie brüllendes das, bitte!...’ Then a moment of calm, after which a voice hollered ‘…wo ist der Mann im Hut?...’ then a second ‘…ja, waar is de man in de hoed?...’ and third ‘…sí, el hombre en el sombrero…’. Dejesus, standing cocksfooted under the Waymart clock tower, said ‘…away with you; this is a place of commerce, have you no manners...’.

A scream came across the sky, einde dat, tevreden schreeuwt! With nowhere to run, nor legs to do so if he had, the legless man crawled under the Seder Grocer’s awning, his heart pounding. Stamped on the box next to him, sopped with water and vinegar, was Ballester’s Red Leaf Beets, Ein Gutes Borscht! Gerade Wie Mutter Bildete! Rooted in with the discarded boxes and trash the legless man sat thinking of the why’s and what for’s of his legless life. A second scream came across the sky, stoppen sie brüllendes das, bitte! the legless man tightening his grip on the cuffs of his belled trousers. In the town of Bury Saint Edmunds behind the Taegu-jikhalsi Apothecary the Daegu sisters were in cahoots with the Arkhangel'sk sisters. Both sisters were in cahoots with the man who laid sod at the Mágoa dor Coração Bowling de Gramado e Campo de Golfe.

Why the legless man thought this now, hunkered beneath the awning tugging on the cuffs of his trousers, was a mystery, peculiar. But then again thinking was something he did as a last resort, a way to bide his time when nothing else was at hand other than his thoughts, which he thought recklessly and with little regard for proper grammar or syntax. Had he an option, any option, he’d have done something other than think, as thinking led to thoughts and thoughts led to other thoughts and thinking to more thinking until he felt like deaf man with an unwanted tune in his head or a blind man with an image in his mind’s eye that won’t go away, blink as he might.

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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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