Friday, September 24, 2010

Quahog Tannery

The harridan’s sister rounded the corner and ran smack dab into Lela, neither woman giving an inch. ‘but I won’t’. ‘you must by God you must’. When she was a little girl her mamma made her wear scratchy sweaters and knee-skirts. She went swimming in the lily pond behind their house, her bathing suit too loose to conceal her frailties. When he was a boy he missed her shoulder blades by an inch; the arrow slicing through her hair and lodging in the trunk of an elm tree. He flew the kite into the telephone wires, the airplanes, soaring, over the top of the house.

Silvestre Quiroga works for the Quahog Tannery, the shirt he wears to work the same one he wears dancing. Haines Fortinbras hasn’t a shirt to his name, his wife having burned them all in a pyre in the backyard. Ghastly cunt, he intoned, Ghastly. He can still hear his mamma hollering in his ear: ‘pull that nuisance of a thing down! (‘but I won’t’). ‘you must by God you must’. The Quahog Tannery manufacture livery goods. Silvestre Quiroga’s job is to stretch and tan the hides used to craft women’s gloves; the gloves petitioned by women of culture and couture. The Vir La Libertad Tailors, the Colugo Seamstresses’, the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. and the Ecija Haberdashers all carry Quahog Tannery livery goods, the same brand Lela’s grandmamma wore winter, summer and fall. Lela claims ‘my grandma never wore the same skirt twice. She was above such ignobility’s ’. ‘it'll fit if you scrunch up your hand. Make a fist by God, a fist!’

The bookmaker’s wife works for the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. pandering to symphony enthusiasts and hoity-toity charity types. The man in the hat met the bookmakers’ wife after the Glutting of the Ewe, the two enjoying a good chuckle together. As he was a sensible man the curate congratulated the bookmaker’s wife on her stately mission, to become the heiress to the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. The Witness swore up and down that a woman of such illusory beauty should not be allowed to set foot in the Vincennes Glove Co. ‘the Quezon Nueva Apparel Co. does not recognize such sexual shenanigans. Women like you should be sent to the mines… ply your dark trade there madam and leave us alone’. The curate of Churchdown, one Cecil Basingstoke, known for his high teas and low morals, chastised the bookmaker’s wife, the blood in his temples reaching unspeakable levels.

Under a mishmash of eel skin the man in the hat found a notebook; and in the notebook was written the following: “yaaaa hooooooooooo wl!” Oftentimes his thinking went haywire; the past swarming his thoughts like lemmings retreating from the cliffs of forgetfulness. At times like these he wished he had a tight fitting cap; one that would squeeze his thoughts into the deepest recesses of his brain. There they could be forgotten, laid to rest with the other thoughts and memories he’d worked so hard to disremember.

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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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