Monday, December 08, 2008

Ignacio Herentals of Avenue 7th Andalucia

The Rioja sisters are known for their Balkan fudge and service to God. Ignacio Herentals of avenue 7th Andalucia wears earflaps and galoshes. He works for the Rioja sisters peddling Balkan fudge and votive cards, each card carrying a verse from the Old Testament. The Rioja sisters wear ankle-length habits and fair wimples, the hat signifying their supplication to God and the Old Testament. The eldest sister, sister Annabelle, wears toehold sandals with socks, as bare feet are a slight to God and an act of unholy desecration. Ignacio Herentals (of avenue 7th Andalucia) wears woolen culottes and an ox-skin chemise, preferring to go about barefooted, as peddling can tax a man beyond perdition. The man in the hat, though not one to decry God, avoided the sisters like the plague, never giving in to their sweet-talk and sermonizing. He bought his fudge from the Boolean sisters, much preferring their swank and lightness of temper. The shamble leg man bought his fudge from the Bernard sisters, a sweet tasting fudge that came packaged in cupcake tins with star anise sprinkled on top. The alms man, not able to afford fudge, nor possessing the chariness to do so had he the money, preferred carob pasties, which he bought by the dozen from the Greek Deli. Dejesus, not one to waste his money on luxuries, avoided any and all people who had even the faintest odor of fudge or carob on their person, preferring cored apples with brown sugar and cobblers’ spice.

The dogmen rallied round the statue of Pious the 27th, having reached a point where they neither knew what was what or where was where. Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Conley, having recently placed a nosegay of flowers at the foot of Pious the 27th, exclaimed ‘…what a gay nosegay…’. The dogmen surrounded the statue, kicking at Pious the 27th’s surplice, the littlest dogman jumping up and down like an organ grinder’s monkey. The sky fell tipple toppling onto the littlest dogman’s head, the dogmen laughing like hyenas. This was not the first time the sky had fallen toppled tippling onto the littlest dogman’s head: it fell tumbling onto his head once before, the day before Advent, a day of beehive hairdos and triple-stitch stockings. The day before Christmas the dogmen daydreamed about the future and the past, the time left out and forgotten, no time, anytime and sometime.

José Ortega y Cassal lives behind the Waymart in a clapboard shack with an oven door window. He is known for his handknit sweaters and pork shoulder pie. His doctor, Dr. Abidjan (of Cote d'Ivoire) prescribes him Beeves Oil and yams, the latter to ease digestion and loosen his stool. José Ortega y Cassal self-administers a poultice twice-weekly, to encourage continence and discourage stiffening of the bowel. Dr. Gerli lives in a bedsit across from the Greek Deli, his wife having left him for a carpetbagger. Dr. Abidjan (of Cote d'Ivoire) and Dr. Gerli are good friends, having met at the Feast of St. Antiunion in 1947. Both Dr. Gerli’s and Dr. Abidjan’s wives’ have pokey legs, neither wife caring for the other, Dr. Abidjan encouraging Dr. Gerli to keep a stiff upper lip as both wives aren’t worth their weight in saltpeter. When the day comes to a careening end, which it does each and every day regardless of Dr. Gerli’s and Dr. Abidjan’s protestations, the milliner across from the Seder Grocer gives the doctors each a sac of corn meal in exchange for a scalp massage and a week’s worth of sniffing salts.

And so it goes day after day, week after week, year after year; lives lived hard cast into the gloom and doom of yesterday’s forgotten horrors. Were it not for Lela and her good tidings and fare thee wells, all days would simply fold one into the other, the end becoming the beginning, the beginning the end, horror of horrors.

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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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