Dlugacz's Deli

That morning, or was it lunchtime?, the soup kitchen queue reached down the street and around the corner, a woman with a sow’s face announcing the coming of the end. She stopped at Dlugacz's Deli for a pork pie, the soup kitchen queue clanking and squabbling like a dessert rattler. ‘get off my shoe’ squabbled a man with a fiery red beard. The taller the beanstalk grew the shorter his da’s temper got. He remembered his da telling him that, that and that he’d never make it to the top if he spent his time messing round like a kid. Giacomo Taldegardo de Juan San Francesco di Sales Saberio Pietro Leopardi hates children; his longer elegiac pieces attest to that. His da said that boys like him had no business thinking they would ever amount to a hill of beans. You’ll never ever never reached the top, his da would say, never ever. The Chinese masseuse yanked his da’s cock, strangling it like a fair-haired chicken. Every morning his mamma laid out his da’s work clothes: a starched and ironed blue pinstriped blue shirt, a pair of denim blue trousers and woolly gray socks. Funny how he never once kissed her on the cheek, never ever.

Lela wished her name was Lorelei, but her mamma said Lorelei was a whore’s name and whores weren’t woman but shylocks who sold slatternly love to unhinged men and pigs. Kaspar had to learn how to whelk all ovary again after he’d spent fifteen years kneeling encrypted in the tomb ova his bode; life’s lest rake ageist death. The sic and befouled, he said; ghastly. The first time she heard her da say this she felt sick to her stomach. The second time she ran out of the house and hid behind the woolshed, her da hollering bloody murder. Get to bed and be quick about it! We haven’t all day you know! Her da was one of those unhinged men her mamma talked about; a fair-haired pig with wiggly ears and a sad tortuous smile. Your da fucks whores, she’d say sprinkling ironing water on his blue pinstriped blue shirt. A ripe cunt of a man; a pig! Clanking and rattling like a coal-shovel! I’ve a mind to starch his ‘thing’, she said running the hissing sniffling iron over his collar. Chinese cock he is; a ripe pig!