Friday, March 27, 2009

The History of Spitting

Every Friday morning at 7;27 his great granddad delivered fish to the Church of the Perpetual Sinner, the rector’s assistant greeting him with a toothsome smile. The Mercury Fish Co. had a contract with the Church of the Perpetual Sinner to supply them with Friday fish, his great granddad being the first member of his family to block and tackle the fish crane that sat in the alleyway behind the Mercury Fish Co. As far back as he could remember his entire family, great granddad, granddad and da, worked for the Mercury Fish Co.

On the nonce, it happened but once, and verily at that. His da had no fancy for mongering or lorry driving, both jobs requiring heavy-lifting and double-clutching. The Basingstoke Fish Co. have a deal with the Hampshire Cannery who are in cahoots with the Rokiskis Bros. who are members of the Panevezio Apskritis Union of Fishmongers. His great granddad preferred alliances and mergers, having little patience for unions and blackguards, seeing the integration of mongers and drivers as a sin against natural law; the shelves in his small library, where he retreated after dinner, except Sundays when the hay was fleecing, lined with Lenin’s notebooks and hardbacks, all of which his granddad had read and reread, the 1027-page History of Spitting his favorite.

When he was old enough to read, which came on his tenth birthday, his da yet to make the beast with two backs with the Celbridge whore, the man in the hat stole through his da’s Popular Photography magazines, stopping every so often to inspect a bare breast or a hairless shin. On his eleventh birthday, his da’s feet letting go at the bottoms for the first time, he read Lenin’s notebooks squared away in his granddad’s armchair, his feet dangling over the edge like footless socks.

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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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