Juntacadáveres

Dejesus rounded the corner and ran slap daub into the Witness, the Witness sticking out his hand like a traffic cop. Ignacy the trumpeter stole Villaseñor’s oxcart, driving it clockwise into the dust. The man’s a menace! Always sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Someone’s gun to kill him, I assure you. On his fifteenth birthday he got a secondhand bicycle and the whooping, narrowly missing his end. His mamma applied a warm compress to his chest, squeezing the cool water into a washbowl she kept on the windowsill by the window. The lustre of his achievements waned as the whooping worsened, his throat swelling to the size of a pumpkin squash. ‘but mamma it hurts’. ‘never you mind’. ‘is it suppose to is it ma?’ ‘yes its suppose to’. ‘but I can’t mamma I can’t’ ‘you will, by God you will!’ On his sixteenth birthday he got a clout in the jaw and a purple eye, his mamma’s new boyfriend not taking a shine to him.

Juntacadáveres carries a blade tucked into his boot just below the hilt. Whenever he feels threatened he unsheathes the blade, waving it like a madman in the face of his assailant. That day the man in the hat met no one, choosing to stay home rather than venture out into the world. Had he ventured out he would have run into a madman and a boy with a head the size of a pumpkin squash. But he did not. When he was a boy he made a raft out of bulrushes and cardboard, strapping it together with clothesline and the metal twists his mamma used to cinch tight garbage bags. In his Billy-Boots, the outsides turned down, his name written in black ink, he would wade into the swamp in search of frogs and torch-size bulrushes. His uncle gave him a an archery set for his tenth birthday, his da making him a quiver out of rolled up newspaper and electrician’s tape. Billy-booted, a garland of hair sticking out from under his hat, he speared frogs with arrows, and arrows with frogs, never quite sure which was which. He impaled two at a time, one on top of the other. He stuck three with one arrow, the third swimming underneath the two. How unlucky, he thought, to be minding one’s own business only to be gutted through the back.

The Witness rounded the corner and ran slap daub into Dejesus, the two coming to a full halt. Villaseñor stole the trumpeter’s oxcart, driving it counterclockwise into the mud. This is surely crazy! Madness, I say, gone counterclockwise! I assure you. ‘but I can’t mamma I can’t’ ‘you will, by God you will!’ When he was a boy he made kites out of garbage bags and coat hangers; taping the bags to the coat hangers with electrician’s tape. He flew the kites, soaring, above the clouds, his mamma hollering at him to ‘pull that nuisance of a thing down! You’re going get it all tangled up in an airplane!’

Henrico Villaseñor

His legs kicked like two hanged men as the doctor turned him on his side. ‘Don’t touch his face…I hear that’s where it’s the worse!’ ‘you’ve already said that’ said the doctor. ‘now move back your blocking the light’. Rolling the body on its other side, the side furthest away from the furnace, the doctor checked for a pulse, the half-corpse’s arms stiffening like lightning rods. ‘bring me the lamp’ ordered the doctor. ‘I need more light’. The farrier walked to the other side of the workshop and grabbed the lamp next to the blast-oven. ‘hurry’ said the doctor cradling the half-dead half-corpse’s head. ‘half-dead or dead the man deserves respect’ said the doctor half-angrily. The dead come in every shape, size and colour; rigor pallor the most conspicuous. Preparing the corpse for transport is best left to professionals and extortionists. He gave the farrier a esculent scowl and pushed down on the half-dead corpse, yellow bile oozing from between the pickets in its teeth. ‘Villaseñor has an oxcart he seldom uses’ said the farrier hoping to convince the doctor that the half-dead corpse should be got rid of. ‘moving him now would be fatal’ said the doctor. ‘he’s barely holding on’. Transporting the half-dead is best left to a specialist with an ear for stiffening. ‘but what if we get sick?’ ‘that’s the price we pay for being human’ said the doctor palpitating the flesh around the half-corpse’s sternum and ribcage. Henrico Villaseñor’s oxcart is made out of spruce; the axel palpitating counterclockwise to the wheels.

As he left {his lean-to}, {the man in the hat} turned gaze upon the spot where he had fallen. "Here Troy was," said he; "here my ill-luck, not my cowardice, robbed me of all the glory I had won; here Fortune made me the victim of her caprices; here the lustre of my achievements was dimmed; here, in a word, fell my happiness never to rise again." (Cervantes, Don Quixote)

Death comes to those who wait, thought the man in the hat. Never a moment before. He knows when death will come. His father died of the whooping when he was a boy; and if the sins of the father are visited on the son, he {too} will be visited by death before his fifteenth birthday. He pulled the half-corpse counterclockwise, pressing down hard on the half-dead man’s shoulders. ‘you say he seldom uses his oxcart’ said the doctor. ‘yes as far as I know he does, or doesn’t?’ said the farrier scratching the top of his sparsely haired head. ‘then go get the cart; and be quick! We haven’t much time’. ‘don’t you mean he?’ ‘who?’ asked the doctor with annoyance. ‘him’ said the farrier pointing at the half-dead corpse. ‘enough! Now off with you; quickly!’ he said, his face as red as a pumping heart.

Balotesti Ilfov

They caught him trying to climb over the five-mile, his stilts stuck fast in the barbwire. Better to have been eaten by the sun than a half-starved relative. The farrier Balotesti Ilfov sleeps in the old gas shed behind the water tower. He works in the garage behind the consignment office, the furnace belching coal smoke like a derailed Puffing Devil. The farrier Balotesti Ilfov makes the beast-with-two-backs with the harridan’s sister, his face a pantomime of unearthly bliss. From the tool shed window he can see the aberrant and hideously syphilitic trying to cross across the five-mile fence; some hanging lifeless in the barbwire, others chanting and picking fresh scabs off sole-worn feet. ‘swinging back and forth, left to die… yet they still keep coming’.

Doctor professor J. Petrus entered the room carrying his leather satchel, the moon glowering over his shoulder. ‘where is he?’ ‘over there’ said the farrier pointing to a heap of filthy clothing on the floor next to the furnace. ‘he’s been like that for days’. ‘have you tried moving him?’ ‘no, I was worried he might wake up’. Standing over the body, for he knew from past experience that heaps such as this concealed a half-dead body, his leather satchel swinging from side to side, the doctor looked down at the heap of dirty clothing, a solitary finger pointing upwards, the nail curled under. ‘He might be sick. Don’t touch his face…I hear that’s where it’s the worse!’ cautioned the farrier warily. ‘move back’ said the doctor, his satchel hanging between his legs like a leather scrotum.

Horse Steel

The tinker fashioned a pair splints out of gate stiles, attaching them to the boy’s legs with screws. He shaved down the tibia, decreasing the gap between the boy’s knees, Saber shins having reduced his gait to a shuffle. Hutchinson's teeth were a common sight beyond the five-mile, the fence built to keep the syphilitics and undesirables out and to ensure that if they did make it passed the first gate, the barbwire would discourage them from continuing any further. His da said that the syphilitics had lopsided heads that made them look like they were walking sideways when they were walking forwards and forwards when they were walking sideways. The children had slanted foreheads and flypaper-thin eyelids. The parents slopping foreheads and hooded eyelids. His da said that the oldest ones were known to eat the younger ones, cooking them on skewers over a brushfire. The ones that got away got caught up in the barbwire, he said, so there was no need to feel sorry for them. Anyhow the sun would cook them, he said, which was better than being eaten by a relative.

“{Lela}, so the history says, was extremely happy to see {the harridan’s sister} in her house. She welcomed {her} with great kindness, charmed as well by her beauty as by her intelligence; for in both respects the fair {Lela} was richly endowed, and all the people of the city flocked to see her as though they had been summoned by the ringing of the bells.” (Cervantes, Don Quixote)

The farrier forged a pair of stilts out of horse steel. Working the kilned steel over the throat he hammered out the longer pieces, pulling and shaping the smaller ones with a pair of long-handle pinchers. He welded the pieces together, milking the joints to ensure a tight fit.

Concha Sucia

His da ran the dogs in the field behind the woolshed. The dogs ran until one of them gave in and lay on its belly. His da put down the dogs that couldn’t run anymore. His da he made a beet stew with the dogs that couldn’t run anymore; the beets turning the meat jugular red. The Acosados Nuestros Pâtés Co. buy the other dogs, the ones his da can’t be bothered putting down, for a dollar fifty a pound. His da makes Callejeros Monigote from sticky paper and sits them on the porch on Santos Inocentes night. The Aracaju whores are known for their fat breasts; some so plump they look like foaling mounts. “No es que crea imposible curarse, sino que no cree en el valor, en la trascendencia de curarse”. (Juan Carlos Onetti, Los Adioses) was written in red paint over the door to the Aracaju bordello, the mad•am, her garishly painted face enough to turn a man’s belly inside out, waving her hankie from the balcony. Juan Paolo Mantegazza carries a piece of paper in his coat pocket. On the paper is written ‘Acosados Nuestros Indios Murieron Al Luchar’, the edges curled up like sleeping children.

The first time the sky fell it fell like a lead balloon; the sun bouncing off the sea-blue surface like a child’s ball. The second and third times it fell it fell upside down; the outsides hitting the ground first, the middle last. The fourth time it fell it fell twice, ricocheting off the surface, the people closest to the middle seeing a blue halo corseting sideways like a rocket. His da boiled the meat and added it to the beets, the quarters dripping with fat. ‘la carne del perro se come mejor con una salsa gruesa’ said a woman in a leper’s skin coat, her hair coiled into a bun. ‘you’re mighty cocksure for a pipsqueak’ said the woman. ‘if one expects to outlive the dying one must be cocksure’ said the man in the round cap, his eyes darting back and forth. ‘anyhow cunts like you are a dime a dozen’ he said smirking. ‘concha sucia!’ hissed the woman in the leper’s skin coat. ‘puede la huelga de dios usted absolutamente!’

Lela stood in front of the church trying to make up her mind: should she enter through the front doors or skulk in through the back. Not sure what to do she walked away, her thoughts pulling her this way and that. His da played the dogs’ ribcages like a xylophone, the smallest bones to the right, the biggest to the left. Sometimes he’d use the hind quarter as a kettle drum, hitting the bones with his fist. Other times he threw the bones into the trash or boiled them into a stock. Or he extracted the marrow and served it in clay bowls with little ear-like handles. His da hated wastefulness and things left out too long in the sun.

Coloc a Luva

The pew-wood scratched the seat of his trousers; the ones his grandmamma sewed him out of seed bags. She’s a mighty fine pinker. Cuts bolts of clothe with an eye for straight lines and hems. Can’t say I can say a bad word about her. Never grants me reason to. And grant she does: gives coppers and redskin pennies to the Women’s Auxiliary and the poor. Ear-to-ear, she gives… dentures bristled with tea-biscuits and doily-thread. A fine woman indeed. ‘coloc a luva, bastardo ladrão!’ yelled a man in a round hat. ‘imediatamente, você torneira otário!’ ‘El astillero’ yelled a man in a peaked cap, ‘Lo vi allí’. He didn’t understand why people screamed when all they had to do was talk. Maybe loud noises made him cringe; or he simply detested people in general. He abhorred people who spoke in riddles, no-good cocksuckers and bare-faced liars. He hated loud, clashing noises; cunts who always seemed to have the answer, even when you didn’t want it; or worse, when you did but were loathe to admit it. He’d fuck them all, Auxiliary ladies with blue hair and soiled nappies; every last one of them. ‘get a lay on’, his da used to say.

Pier - 'On the Road'

Enormous Head

He awoke with a start, his head double the size it was the night before. He shook his head up and down, then from side to side all the while counting from 100 backwards, something he did when he felt out-of-sorts, then opening open his jaw he let out a groaning sigh; the sky outside his lean-to window shattering into a million jewel-like pieces. ‘good God my head is enormous!’ He felt like the devil had knocked the stuffing out of him; everything other than his head smaller than it was the day before. Let him die and be done with it; further sentence is foolish. Unexpectedly, faintly the sky fell into his rooftop; collapsing the timbers, joists and crossbeams. You should have aimed higher; by God Yes twice as high higher! Twice the size that it was the night before. Was it? it was. You can’t make a purse out of a boar’s ear; its sacrosanct… the ear. That morning the man in the hat rose from bed a different man; the sky outside his lean-to window twice the size it was the day before. ‘better that it grow twice than fall’ he thought to himself. The surest way to corrupt the sky is to make it littler; like things in a mirror: they always appear bigger than they actually are.

‘it’s not what you make of it, but what it makes of you’ said the Witness. ‘never confuse the one for the other’. His face reddening he ended with ‘God makes things! Not you!’ ‘sodomizer’ said the boy next to the freckled-face boy. ‘always sneaking up behind you’. He wears paisley socks, his hammertoes piercing the woolly end. The boy sitting next to the freckle face boy yanks on his socks, the elastics frayed round the shins. ‘God made you!’ said the Witness pointing at the freckle face boy. ‘sodomizer’ said the boy next to the freckled-face boy.

29th

‘I must go on I won’t go I can’t’ thought the man in the hat, a tuffaceous posy of hair sticking out from under his hat. Today being the 29th day of the month, a month that seemed to go on and on, a month that sat in his thoughts like a lowly beggar, shirt torn, hands outstretched revealing a capacious litter of sores, thumbscrews, fingers pressed together in prayer, summoning gods and heathens, the steeple of his head warding off lightening strikes and rogue pigeons, the next to last to last day of the month loitered like an unwanted lover, her advances making you wonder what you saw in her to begin with. ‘especially the dead’ he mumbled to himself, ‘or the dying.

It makes no difference to me; either way they’re not alive, living, yes, but not alive ’. The dead die and the living die; the trick is in knowing which is which. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the littlest dogman appeared from behind a fallen stand of fichus’, his chest puffed out like a fat man’s stomach, his eyes trained on the man in the hat. Pointing he garbled something faintly, softly, yet loud enough to raise the hair on the man in the hat’s neck. Not sure how to respond the man in the hat walked in the opposite direction, the littlest dogman playing his ribcage like a xylophone, the sun cutting the Seder Grocer’s awning to ribbons.

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." (Friedrich Nietzsche) was written in an unsteady hand over the door to the Zum Zum Tavern, the proprietor offering a free drink to whomever could shoot the ‘Y’ out of ‘youth’. ‘fools’ thought the man in the hat. ‘should aim for the ‘R’… knock the stuffing out of the devil, by God’.

James Joyces Ulysses (1967)_6.avi

Vomolbo the Sluggard

He went to bed thinking of summer days that went on for ever and ever, his mamma standing at the foot of his bed saying ‘get up, the day’s half over’, his da laying the new sod in the half-yard, the sun burning his shoulders hot-chili red. Georg Ludwig Trakl lives in the house across the street with a half-mad dog. The half-mad dog runs in circles in the back yard. Basel Zarathustra passed away on the 25th day of the eighth month nineteen hundred naught zero, his remains interned in a butcher’s box in a garden overlooking the Overnight Asylum. When not sketching still-life’s, which he does sequestered away in the smallest room in his cottage, Basel Zarathustra tends to the half-mad dog’s evacuations; the half-mad dog’s master, Georg Ludwig Trakl, too busy tending to his own to bother with the dog’s. Féin Aust-Agder spends his days watching the half-mad dog running round and round in circles. Georg Ludwig Trakl’s claims that half-mad dogs are more human than people. ‘babies need they’re shit pulled out of they’re crap-holes, dogs don’t. And dogs make they’re commode crouching, not sitting on a seat’.

The sluggard Vomolbo sits all day looking out the window of his cottage, his peach-plump hands holding up the hammock of his chin. He watches Féin Aust-Agder watching the half-mad dog running in circles in Georg Ludwig Trakl’s half-yard. Across the alleyway peering through a fissure in the fence Féin Aust-Agder watches the sluggard Vomolbo watch the ½-mad mutt kicking up dirt running in circles, neither aware that the other is watching the other. Dogs shit and babies shit and men and women and morons shit. But dogs shit standing, babies and men and women don’t. Morons shit anywhere they please; sitting, standing or crouching in the corner. The man in the hat felt a cold coming on; the skin around his eye sockets achy and red. He didn’t care whether dogs shit standing or crouching, all he cared about was his achy red skin.

The man in the hat stood looking at his reflection in a puddle of dog urine, the dog halfway down the street running in circles, its tail serving as a lightening rod or a ship’s rudder (who’s to know which?) Across the street leaning unsteadily against the Seder Grocer’s doorpost the Witness handed out blue and white pamphlets, the dog circling his bellbottomed trousers. Standing on the corner, his feet shuffling like thrown dice, the alms man held his alms-cap out in front of him, the cap sagging with washers and wooden-nickels. Her skirts hiked up round her waist the harridan’s sister makes her way across the sideways, the sun striating her forehead with red lines, the dog raising a hind leg and pissing on the Witness’ leg. Watching from the middle of the street, the dog’s urine inching closer to his foot, the man in the hat let out a sigh, and removing his cap said ‘the dead do no one any good, especially the dying.’

Efrén

Carlos Pérez Efrén and Juan Vizcaíno Hernández met one afternoon in the park behind the Waymart, neither man aware that the other had a bone to pick with Nepomuceno Jalisco. Nepomuceno Jalisco lived in a collapsing shed on the outskirts of the five-mile fence, his life a day-to-day fight with consumption and violent whooping (brought on by dead rotting things and things almost dead or soon to be dead, although rotting just the same). ‘I am a man not to be fooled with… stay clear of my temper, it will exhaust what little patience and goodness you have in your heart’. The first time Carlos Pérez Efrén heard this pronouncement he was a boy of nine accompanying his mother to the market; Nepomuceno Jalisco, standing stock-still between the baker and the butcher, his lips moving like red licorice whips, claiming that he knew the whereabouts of the red glove, and for a quiver of arrows would divulge its location. His mamma, grabbing hold of his hand pulled him past the deranged objectionable man, her face slick with rain.

Most days the sun sits in the sky over the Waymart clocktower. Most nights the moon squats like a yellow whore, her lovers the clouds defiling her from behind. Chiriquí’s saddle horn cleaves his testicles in half, splayed sacs of fleshy life flattened against his jiggling thighs. “So vehement and so piteous were the lamentations of {Hörbiger} that they drew tears from {Roué’s} eyes, unused as they were to shed them on any occasion.” (Cervantes di Miguel, Don Quisciotte). This is how it begins; the air churning round and round his head, then a snap, then nothing, stillness, the ceiling fan groaning under the weight of his body. In that epigrammatic second before death a thought, a lamentation, ‘Why doesn’t he steal a horse and make a getaway?’ Then ‘Dying does no one any good, especially the dead.’ ‘There’s no denying the truth’ his dad said. ‘even when it’s a lie’, his laugh soaring like a kite into the blue afternoon sky.

Plástico y Excremento

Y plástico y excremento de apariencia anormal, the bed sheets coiled round his ankles, the head matron beside herself with disgust. ‘give him a suppository’. ‘quick before he fills the room with shat’. ‘try prying his knees apart!’ ‘widget, watch the damn widgets!’ ‘easy as it goes’. ‘slowly’. Oh but the depths of depravity. José Proaño wears women’s hats, claiming they are much better at keeping his head safe from falling skies. With equal arms the head matron stopped his scatting, his maundering dispatches driving her mad. ‘his legs. Squeeze, you foolish woman!’ Dr. Mudstone stood glowering over the bed, his manicured hands clasped in prayer. ‘stick it in his ass!’ he ordered, the matron pushing down hard on his head.

You might ask what does Oskar Hörbiger have to do with the story? Nothing. He arrives, then as quickly as he arrives departs, leaving behind a wedge in your thoughts. (You might ask but you shouldn’t! Nothing I have to say is worth listening to. You’d do better with sums; with things that can be made sense of. Move on; you’ll find nothing of interest here).

The first time he fell toppling backwards, the noose hanging itself. The second time he fell forward, the chair catapulting into the kitchen table. The third time the rope cut through his neck, the laryngeal cartilage popping through the skin. Hanging himself was the one uncensored act he had left; the adjectival having deputized the first-person-participial. Camberwell Jowett eventually hanged himself from the kitchen light, Sandefjord the orderly unhooking him from the garret-beam and wrapping him in oilcloth. Not a word was spoken that night about the hanging in the Overnight Asylum; Camberwell Jowett’s bed was reassigned and his belongings burned in the makeshift crematorium in the basement.

The day after the hanging a young girl claiming to be Camberwell Jowett’s daughter arrived in town, the director of the Overnight Asylum sending her out the front door on the toe of his boot. When word got out that another patient had hanged himself at the Overnight Asylum the rector called for an investigation, claiming that 'God’s work was being meddled with and whomever was responsible would be punished accordingly'.

Oskar Hörbiger

Oskar Hörbiger has no place in common society. A rogue, a mountebank, the scoundrel is not to be trusted: putting faith in him is like believing in {fairytale} happy endings, proof of man’s abject stupidity. One-time owner of the Bejel Linen Co., general nuisance and gadabout, the cunt should be thrown to the dogs, if they’d have ‘em, which they wouldn’t. The original owner of the Bejel Linen Co., Girolamo Pétasse, transferred ownership to the cad Hörbiger after falling ill with the whooping, which he died from two months later, alone, febrile and shivering in the tinsmith’s shed behind the livery. Dr. Mudstone pronounced him dead and signed the death certificate, warning the tinsmith that he best fumigate the shed before returning to the anvil. Dr. Ragama, ignoring proper practice, gave the corpse an enema, running the hose over and through the transom and attaching the tin nozzle to the rubber gills. Then the Dr. prescribed a good scrubbing to exfoliate the dead hanging skin. The internist Dr. Salcedo, who happened to be passing by that day and is renown for his skill at straightening bent and twisted legs, which he achieves by bending them over a pommel, offered to dispose of the rotting corpse, donating it to the burn ward of the hospital at Coláiste Cliath, which admits corpses and the half-dead Wednesdays and Friday evenings. Nonsense! Girolamo Pétasse died from rickettsia, his knees locked together like widgets. The night before he died Dr. Mudstone prescribed y vidrio o plástico de analéptico for recurrent excremento de apariencia anormal, the patient having shat himself twice before anyone noticed.

José “Pepe” Conteris

He let go of the back of the pew and allowed himself to fall backwards, sinking into the crooked floorboards. ‘see, God does renounce those who disbelieve!’ exclaimed the rector’s assistant. ‘nonsense’ bellowed a man sitting in the front pew. ‘the man’s obviously fainted… look at his eyes’. Winded (as he had just come up from the basement where he had been sent to retrieve the Host) the red-haired altar boy tripped and fell headlong into the pulpit, the Host flying every-which-where. Pointing his talon-like finger, stained yellow from years of smoking, the rector said ‘Now let us pray’. ‘what is the meaning of this?’ said the Witness striding up the centre aisle, Dritëro Vogel in tow. Dritëro, a man of squat-measure, his torso four-square to his shoulders, accompanied the Witness on his evangelical rounds, ensuring the sanctity of the Holy Word and mealy-mouthing anyone heathen enough to contest the inviolability of the Blessed Lamb. Slamming his fist against the altar, his ring-finger tolling, the Witness gathered in his overcoat and turned to face the congregation, Dritëro Vogel close on his heels. ‘yes a heathen, a wretch, but a lamb of God just the same’.

‘Non lasci uomo gettare la prima pietra, che lui lapidato egli stesso’ said an old man sitting in the back pew, his face a withered rotten apple. ‘Sim, e pode queda do céu no inferno’ said a second old man, his face a bashed in tomato. ‘y puede Cristo estar con usted’ said a woman with a pockmarked face. ‘puta de la concha’ whispered Lela, her fire-red bangs hiding her eyes. ‘may the Blessed Lamb be your friend’ said the rector, the stain on his robe taking on the appearance and shape of a goat. ‘in the name of God Almighty, amen’.

José “Pepe” Conteris, his mouth stuffed with boiled mutton, let out a sigh, his forehead crimped like windswept drapes. ‘Nonsense!’ bellowed £. Q. Beiträge, his mamma tugging at his shirtsleeve. ‘stop!’ I implored stop! implored Złolton ₤owther, his eyes boiled mutton gray. ‘Cristo estar con usted, do céu no inferno’’ said man with the bashed-in face. ‘for the love of God!’ yelled the Witness. ‘enough is enough!’

Złolton ₤owther

Âmapanada Del Amour sits facing the Seder grocer’s window, her hair pulled back into a nosegay. Next to her sits a girl in a yellow cotton dress, her fingers worrying the beads of her rosary. Across from the girl in the yellow cotton dress sits the littlest dogman, his chest puffed out like an courting ɡraʊs. Walking passed on his way home the man in the hat gives the littlest dogman an stern look, the littlest dogman smiling broadly from ear-to-ear. ‘menace’ says the man in the hat. ‘its getting so a girl can’t worry her beads without having to turn her back on the world’.

The night he met Âmapanada Del Amour the sky was as black as the inside of a storm lantern; snowflakes eddied like kicked dandelions, the smoke from the coke oven smarting their eyes, and in the pew across from them, sitting next to his mamma, £. Q. Beiträge snickering at the spilt wine on the rector’s dress, and sitting in the front pew across the aisle €von ¥olanda and Złolton ₤owther, €von working her rosary like an abacus, Złolton making a pocking sound with his mouth, the rector giving them the eye of the lamb, £. Q. busting a stitch, his mamma tugging plaintively at his shirt sleeve. That night, the lamps flickering like drunken fireflies, the moon shimmering like a Christly halo, he slid his hand beneath Âmapanada Del Amour’s skirts, the milk-softness of her nethermost trembling his fingers.

Blimunda, now there’s a real looker, stork long legs and lips like smashed cherries. The Harpsichordist Bartolomeu de Gusmão creeps between her legs supping, her Mons Venus moaning. José de Sousa Lourenço, Mons Venus my love my dear my Mons. ‘stop! I beseech you stop!’ beseeches Złolton ₤owther. ‘stop your sniveling’ scolds £. Q. Beiträge.

José “Pepe” Conteris likes boiled mutton, his jowls bobbing as he masticates chin-size pieces of meat. Leave it to a no-good fool to make a mockery of chin-food. May as well pin the tail on the ass; either way the fool will fight the fool until the end is née. The man in the hat swooned, his head full of nonsense and blather. When he felt the swooning coming on, which it did, it did, he knew that he had been thinking too much; and when his thoughts crowded in on his life he knew it was time to sit quietly without moving an inch. Snivelers and no-good fools, they filled his head with nonsense; enough to make a man reevaluate his place in ‘it all’. Nonsense!

Booker T & Drive By Truckers & Neil Young

Cretino

On the second day he fell into stupor. On the third day thoughts began to resurface, undersized miniscule thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless. On the fourth and fifth days he started thinking mawkish petty thoughts. On the sixth day he had a complete thought that sent him reeling with fear: ‘for we shan't always find castles where they'll entertain us; now and then we may light upon roadside inns where they'll cudgel us…’ (Don Quisciotte, Cervantes di Miguel). When he awoke on the eighth day, which he did begrudgingly having spent the previous day recuperating from the fifth and sixth days, he noticed a peculiar taste at the back of his throat. This he found noteworthy as never to his knowledge had he noticed it, or if he had he hadn’t noticed that he had, and furthermore one taste’s tastes not notice them, so the argument was moot anyhow. On the ninth day the stupor returned, the previous day’s recuperation falling short of the mark. And on the tenth day his thoughts returned to normal, or so he thought.

He recalled the soup kitchen behind the parking lot; a queue of hungry men stamping their feet trying to stay warm. A man wearing a hairpiece pushing his way up to the front, the queued hissing like steam valves. ‘cretino bocó’ groused a man at the rear of the queue, the back of his coat covered with the throw-up of the man behind him. ‘soltar pum!’ His sou'wester aureoling his head he walked down the line looking for butting-inner’s and loudmouths.

Grupo Rojo

And then, not a second before then, los Grupo Rojo, under the banner of Proceso de Reorganización Nacional Montoneros, came rushing into his thoughts, Solar Ramón, and that salacious cunt El Tío, stepping off the plane and onto the tarmac, Guerra Sucia sitting like a beaten child in front of him bawling. ‘this is outlandish!’ he said to himself, not quite sure who himself was. Solar Ramón will steal the teeth right out of your mouth, then break your jaw just for the fun of it. Kékes, poor bastard’s never seen a snatch up close; says its too soon to tell if the sky’ll fall before breakfast, eats eggs like a preacher, mouthful after mouthful, never once giving into the yolk. The Macclesfield Armorists’ stood two-abreast the arroyo awaiting the lowering of the flag, Captain Cheshire chewing the grist of his thumb. His thoughts rambled, hobbling the inside of his skull. He stopped for a café au lait, taking in the morose performances of the coffee-drinkers and their hangers-on’s, each one more morose and indefatigable than the next. He slurped back the coffee, now tepid and undrinkable, and placed the now empty cup on the grainy wood in front of him, his thoughts rattling. ‘descabelar o palhaço’ he said loud enough for all to hear, and walked out the front door and into the street.

Mijão

The man in the hat stood leaning against the bust of King Olaf, passerby’s giving him the once-over. This had happened before, people gawking, giving him the once-over. He was observed by people whom he would never meet. He spent countless hours watching others watch him, gazing at lips that he would never kiss, legs he would never pry apart, sinking his cock into places he knew existed but had never seen up close. And in his head a blasphemous narration in a tongue he didn’t understand:

…cagar, titica, merda em boca, Mijar, Mijada, Mijão, Bufa soltar pum, gás, soltar um gasinho, Peidorreiro, Flatulento, Gaseiro, Estúpido, Cretino, bobão, bocó, Despropósito, Doido varrido, Intelijumento, Mongolóide, Debilóide, Débil-mental, Doente-mental, Beócio, Aparvalhado, Atoleimado, Paspalho, Palúrdio, Paspalhão, Patego, Pancrácio, Papalvo, Papa-moscas, Pascácio, Estafermo, Beldroegas, Bangalafumenga, Zé-ninguém, João-Ninguém, Zé-mané, Bolônio, Tchalau, Tchalongo, Tchongo, Tontão, Cabaça, Coió, Leseira, Toleirão, Titica-na-cabeça, Cabeça-de-vento, Idéia-de-jerico, Abobalhado, Dãrdi, Estólido, Néscio, Calinada, Otário, Lerdo assclown histrião Canhão tribufu, baranga, mocréia, dragão, jaburu chifrudo… Cafajeste/Canalha/Crápula/Calhorda/Patife/Tratante/Trapaceiro/Embusteiro/Abjeto, Salafrário, Safardana, Babaca, Tosco, Boçal, Bronco, Cavalão, Grosso, Grosseirão, Cavalgadura Filho da mãe sentar o sarrafo, parafusear, rosquear Lamber o cu, performar cunete, rimming, cuzete, lambe-cu, botão de rosa, tulipa roxa, beijo grego enculé Afogar o ganso, molhar o biscoito, descabelar o palhaço, escorregar no quiabo, bater uma, Espancar o macaco, descabelar o palhaço, cinco contra um, bater um amistoso, bucetinha, bucetão, xana, xoxota, xota, buça, xereca, tcheca, xeca, cobiçada, perseguida, piriquita, bacurinha, xavasca, racha, fenda, Poupança, ripa, piroca, pistola, peru, trabuco, nabo, mandioca, benga, jeba, sagatiba, bigola, bilau…

Then “‘The only dangers for me are metaphysical’” and “‘Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity’” (Jules Florencio Cortázar) ‘this is getting me nowhere… and quickly at that!’ he said inveigled. ‘pass Paspalhão pass Passépartout. Its all the same in the end’.

Ter Titica na Cabeça

He jumped off the back of the oxcart two miles shy of Co Offaly, his legs aching, the back of his head matted with straw. No matter how hard he tried the muleteer couldn’t avoid the runnels and undulations that littered the road, the back of the oxcart kicking like a foaling mare. ‘by Christ I almost ate my tongue’. The station attendant walked along the dirt path to the livery, the muleteer following behind him like a stray dog. The last time he saw the station attendant he was wearing the same squalid redcap. The lacquey Tosilos came up from the cellar carrying a pickaxe and a shovel, behind him the judges of the field and the appellant duennas, each carrying a rake and a tar pot.

Oliver Etnad stood two feet shy of the field judge, and judging by his posture he was none too pleased to be sharing the same shadow with the judge and the lacquey Tosilos. The sun, sitting higher than usual in the sky cast a shadow twice the size of a well-kept orchard. That day “Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face” (Ulysses, James Aloysius Joyce), his forehead anodyne pale. (Coclé Pennon and Gerald Og, no relation to Jerrod Og, met under a broiling hot sun outside the Co Offaly station, neither man aware that the other had booked passage on the eastbound oxcart scheduled to leave at noon). The field judge and the lacquey Tosilos stood two-astride the biggest runnel, neither shovel nor tar pot seeming immense enough to fix the frottage. ‘good Christ, what a runnel!’ exclaimed the field judge. ‘we’ll never get this thing filled before the noontime’ said lacquey Tosilos. ‘not with these shovels and tar pots we won’t’. The field judge shook his head up and down and back and forth, grinding his teeth until he could taste them at the back of his throat.

Holding his alforjas out in front of him he walked cobbling to the station, a supremely happy look on his face. That morning the field judge offered him a modest purse with two hundred gold crowns, enough to pay for his ticket home. He refused the gift, saying he’d rather starve than accept alms from a cheat and a scoundrel. Trifaldi, standing abreast Coclé Pennon and Gerald Og shook his head back and forth; he too wanted nothing to do with rogues and villains. ‘who’re you calling a rogue, Pisón?’ grumbled the lacquey Tosilos, his armpits dripping like hanging laundry. Two of the judges of the field and the appellant duennas stood their ground, refusing in kind to have anything to do with cutthroats or cold-cockers.

Bucetão

He set upon the day, thoughts of Lela metering his every step. The last time he saw her was at the Feast of the Nestbeschmutzer, her yellow summer dress making her look like a freshly plucked daisy, her polished feet barely touching the ground. He stared at her from afar, hands trembling, the sun cascading off her nut-brown shoulders. ‘I must have her’ he whispered. ‘I must I must’. She walked towards the gate, and looking over her nut-brown shoulder smiled in his direction, her lips as red as a coughing throat. Not knowing what to do he turned and walked away, his neck as taut as a boxer’s fist.

He set upon the evening, his favourite hat adorning his head. He noticed that the lamplighter had not made his rounds; the city adrift on a sea of black. Correcting his hat, realigning the brim with the hatband, he continued on into the ocean of night, his feet skipping like stones across the pavement. ‘I must have her’’ he said over and over again. ‘I must I’. Ficha Limpa sits admiring his newly-polished shoes, a woman with a nervy smile counting the bluebells in the hammock of her skirt. Lela closes her eyes, the last plum leavened, pushed in place. ‘emita a meretriz gorda ao Alçada’ commanded Setubal the Awful. ‘e não esqueça para tomar-lhe luvas!’ His thoughts set upon him like a tempest, one thought leavened into another into another. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t change his mind; unthought-of thoughts storming his mind until he couldn’t distinguish one from the other. Over and over again, like a tattooing on the underside of his skull: “man proposes and God disposes…” (Don Quisciotte, Miguel di Cervantes) until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He shook his head up and down and back and forth, grinding his teeth until he could taste them at the back of his throat; spittle cemented with ivory and silver filings. Setubal the Awful never turns down a bit on the side, puts his back into it, arms and legs thrashing like sailcloth. Seen the noble cunt give it to a cur with both fists, enough to make your stomach churn, by Christ it was.

Buenos Aires at Night

Nestbeschmutzer!

The legless man birched his way up the sideways, his pushcart wobbling from side to side. As today he had decided to be contumelious (to a fault) he veered and caromed trying to knock over as many passerby’s as he could, a munificent grin widening his already wide face. He barreled over a man wearing a Zuckerstätter cap, the poor man toppling head over heel to the pavement. Next he rammed into a woman in a Burgtheater wig, the wig leaping from her head and flying down the sideways like a hirsute kite. ‘Nestbeschmutzer!’ hollered the now hatless man, his face as red as a crushed rose. ‘scoundrel!’ yelled the wigless woman, ‘you’ve made a fool of me!’ hollered the once Zuckerstätter capped man. He upended a woman walking her dog, sending them crashing into the Seder grocer’s storefront window, both woman and dog tinseled in broken glass. ‘cocksucker!’ screamed the woman at the top of her lungs, ‘Nestbeschmutzer!’ hollered the hatless man ‘scoundrel!’ yelled the wigless woman, ‘kill the legless cunt!’ shouted a man with one eye ‘freak!’ Smiling from ear-to-ear the legless man punted across the medium, ‘not a cloud in the sky’ he said to himself ‘what a beautiful day’.

The day began and ended and ended and began until beginning and ending were indistinguishable from one another. The man in the hat sat on a bench thinking of ways to sit that didn’t hurt his back, moving his buttocks from side to side, sliding across the wooden top of the green splintered bench. He did things (to a fault), either sitting or pretending to sit but slouching, which he did when sitting hurt his back, preferring to slouch rather than sit thinking of ways to sit that didn’t effect his back, which hurt more often than not. He thought perhaps sitting on his hands, raising his body up like a gallows, might lessen the pain; but it simply redistributed the pain to his lower back and arms.

Flagella

The sinned and the sinning wait on the steps of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner for Mass to begin. A lineman from the Mark Twain Rural Telephone Co., cap in hand says ‘a fiver to anyone who can ping a rock off the bell’. A young boy raises his hand, ‘I’ll give it a try sir’. A hush falls over the crowd, a sinning woman says to the sinned man beside her ‘O but to be young and foolish again’. The sinned man replying ‘you foolish woman, that’s how we ended up on these steps to begin with’. Hidden behind King Olaf the littlest dogman snickers, his fingers drumming the birdcage of his chest. Behind the littlest dogman sits a man on a bench reading the newspaper, his eyes darting back and forth as he searches the obits for his name, the ruckus on the steps of the church trammeling his ability to concentrate. ‘I have no patience for the sinned or the sinning’ he burbles to himself. ‘damn muggers need a good thrashing!’ Closing and folding the newspaper he rises off the bench and ambles diagonally towards the gate that leads into the park across from the church, the newspaper stuffed under his arm for safekeeping. ‘were I not such a delicate man I’d whip them myself’. Having allowed what he said to register in his thoughts, which he did with most things he said and or thought, he walks up the steep incline that separates the aqueduct from the park, the newspaper birching his kidneys like an Opus Dei flagella.

Swords Co.

‘sluit de deur, você está deixando o frio dentro!’ The wool merchant slammed shut the door and returned to his work, his hands shaking aggressively. ‘its getting so man can’t make an honest living. I move into the forest yet somehow people find me, come knocking at my door!’ The felon tripped of his own volition, cracking his head in three places. Detective Garda Nolan Falls was heard to exclaim ‘this sort of thing happens all the time’. To which Commander Garnet Galsworthy added ‘in Swords. I can’t speak for other Districts’. The Herschel Liege pantomime troop played the Sword’s county hall the night the felon was arrested; Galsworthy and Garda Falls attending the final show of the evening. That night the wool merchant filed a grievance with the Swords Co. constabulary claiming that there were crazy hooligans larking about in his yard, two of whom were outfitted in women’s clothing. George Legnica and Albert Jawor were charged with mischief and sentenced to three months to be served in the Sword County Gaol.

The man in the hat shook his head not once, but twice, his brain unable to register what he’d just read. As it had been a long arduous day, many of his thoughts restricted to mundane things, what colour vest to wear with his tweed jacket or which knot to tie his boots with (in the past he had difficulties with his boots staying tied, the laces unraveling at the most inopportune moments, like when bending down to plant a kiss on a child’s head or rushing to make the betting window before the off-track close), he pushed his thoughts into the back of his head and continued home, the sun barracked in a canebrake of clouds over his head. The Poughkeepsie Constabulary arrested two men dressed in women’s clothing outside the Sword’s county hall; two Poughkeepsie policemen enjoying a smoke on the steps of the hall swiftly wrestling the two transgressors to the pavement. His head throbbing like a stubbed toe the man in the hat rounded the corner and headed home, the Poughkeepsie Constabulary interrogating his every thought.

Gaol

He hi-tailed it up the sideways, the prospect of lightheadedness cursing his every step. ‘poor fellow knifed with a Sword… a man resembling a dog taken into custody. No reply when charged. Silly dog probably jumped up on his lap’. Detective Garda Nolan Falls told the court that the man had a deep voice and scratched himself with his hind leg. The people of Swords, Co Dublin, unable to contain their anger cajoled the felon, a few throwing bricks and stones, bouncing them off his droopy-eared head.

Monday July 26 2010

A court reporter was heard to say, ‘the man appeared to be lightheaded, thrusting his arms out from his sides in a vain attempt to balance himself’. The Swords constabulary, under the command of Garnet Galsworthy, attempting to calm the man knocked into the alleyway behind the Gaol, the felon’s face inviting several well-placed kicks. Detective Garda Nolan Falls told the court that the man had made no reply following the incident.

Monday Independent

Garrulous

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Oliver Schlomo

The stench was overbearing, as some stenches take on an otherworldly smell, half human half beast. It clawed at his forehead, gouging in behind the eyes, pressing on the halves of his brain. He smelled it with his thoughts, half beast half human, separating the stench from the everydayness of smells, odors that one needn’t worry oneself with. ““You spoke late,"” said Tromsø. “"I'd as soon turn Turk as stay any longer.”” (Don Quixote, Cervantes) Uéfec Délair has worked as an orderly for the Overnight Asylum for 27 years, 16 dispensing medication and 9 delousing inmates.

How do you function when your legs and arms stop working? I suppose you could remain impassive… and say were a pigeon to alight on your shoulder you’d shiver, yes, but that wouldn’t be enough, the pigeon, oblivious to your failure to shake it off would stay, like a bad thought gets caught in the wiring until the sickness forces you to change your mind, snip the wire… I suppose you could try that, mind you it would be a waste of time. Altogether your legs and arms are like broken sticks, useless appendages weighing you to the floor, the bench, the very same spot you lay in, shivering, the day before and the day before that.

Oliver Schlomo met the man in the hat on an unpardonably humid afternoon behind the aqueduct, the air thick with the stench of rotting fish, the pump clotted with dead river things, tortoise shells and one-legged arthropods, exoskeletons, chitin and unsavvy bullfrogs.

Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada

Tromsø sleeps in a dorm in the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada) where he is studying to become a machinist. On the first day of his studies he falls ill and is sent to the infirmary. The second day he is removed from the school and relocated to the Waldau Sanatorium where he is treated for a corrupt soul. On the third day he asks the orderly if he can visit a friend in the Overnight Asylum across the street from the Waldau Sanatorium. Shaking his head the orderly says ‘okay, but make sure your back before lights out’. They call him Tromsø because he has a face like a reindeer. The man in the hat met Tromsø at the Feast of the Annunciation; Tromsø carrying with him a broadsheet on which was printed the following: “La literatura es mentir bien la verdad” (Juan Carlos Onetti). After making each other’s acquaintance they go their separate ways, the whistle on the clocktower of the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics signaling the end of school.

Over the door to the mess on a plaque typically reserved for mounting angled fish, a fish which would have ruined many an appetite, bone-rotten as an indecently mounted fish tends to be, or at least one not mounted with prudence, was the following epitaph, “I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance” (Friedrich Nietzsche) and below that, yet seeming to exist on a different plain altogether,

"When I sat down to die, my soul prayed for me to get up and drag on with my life, as if it still expected some miracle to cleanse me of my sins. I didn't even try. 'This is the end of the road,' I told it. 'I don't have the strength to go on.' And I opened my mouth to let it escape. And it went. I knew when I felt the little thread of blood that bound it to my heart drip into my hands." (Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo)

30 Nights

It wasn’t until his first night in the Overnight Asylum that he became aware of his illness. Then when they moved him to Waldau Sanatorium, which they did by hook and crook, smuggling him out on the back of an oxcart, he accepted his stock in life. The first night they punctured his thigh with a long sharp needle filling him up with a mixture of Thorazine and cod-liver oil. The following day they filled him with Klor-dye-az-eh-POX-ide and Dulcolax, his legs giving way and his arms swaying from side to side. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t stop his arms from swaying, the once happy bones in his elbows now unmerchantable and morose. The doctor prescribed a mild apagogic to be administered before bed. The third night he soiled the bed, the orderly throwing the shitted-on linen in the laundry that was rolled around on wheels. He calculated how long he could exist in a stupor: 27½ days. Then how long he could sleep on his back: 30 nights. On the seventh day the doctor pressed on his kidneys checking for stones and abscesses. The eighth and ninth days he slept on his side, the bedsores on his back weeping like frightened children. On the tenth day he was visited by the Tasmania brothers Arlen and Launceston, the brothers reveling him with stories of intrigue and folly. The eleventh and twelfth days he spent submerged in an ice bath, the doctor figuring it would do his constitution some good. On the thirteenth day he requested an ice bath, having found the first one invigorating. On the fourteenth day the sky outside his window fell, leaving a big hole in the roof. The fifteenth and sixteenth days a truckload of Mormon barn raisers arrived to repair the caved-in roof; the sanatorium administrator rewarding them for their hard work with a tinctura opii camphorata each and a free shave. They call him Tromsø because he has a face like a reindeer.

Porch Rats

He thought of the sister that was given away as an infant because she was retarded and the chances of her contributing anything to the world fractional. He turned and walked down the street, the hum of the slaughterhouse saw cricketing in his ears. She remembers a small dog with a chain around it’s nick pulling at the corner uv her blanket, its yello teeth white with slaver, it’s eyes blak as night.

She remembers two bodes, a man and a wounds; the man picking her up and cradling her in the basket uv his strong rms. She can think bank ta the smell uv a man and a womun, the Oder uv glands an sweat glistening unbar their armpits’, cam fore and cinnamon, the sweetness and the hard stench uv bodes astir wreck. The man and the women fed her fram a goats teat and rubbed oils and powders anta her skin. They stayed by her wan she creed at night an comforted her wan the thunder and wind pounded up ageist the sides uv ta cottage like anger ghosts cum to reclaim what wo rightfully theirs. She had lived with this cual until she was fifteen, than moved on in search uv her birth parents’, an the resins why they had left her on that footstep that day fifteen years ago. She went in search uv answers, not sure uv what she’d find, not certain that she wanted what she’d find and unsure if their actuate was anteing out their; a part uv her, a pence uv the puzzle that had begum her life. Eight years later, after crossing the berth an depth uv a weld she had ogle red about in books, she settled in the cottage outside the vie-mille fence with a slow dog with an appetite for porch rats. He remembered the morning his sister was taken away in the big cab, the driver pushing the seat forward so his sister could crawl in the back. His parents watched from the stoop as the car backed out of the laneway and turned north, his sister waving her handkerchief from the backseat window.

Dreadful Man

The carver sliced a coil of pig’s tail and slapped it greasily on the plate, the man in the hat swallowing the spittle caught at the back of his throat. Next to him to his left sat a dreadful man, his jowls greasy with knuckle. The dreadful man ate like a flophouse hosteller, cramming joints of greasy knuckle into his mouth with both hands. He lay his hands on his belly, a sloop of grease anchored on his chest, the man in the hat watching on with disgust. He begirded his tie and straightened out the front of his chemise, the buttons hanging on by a yarn. Zug two-fists strays, approaching from the flank and lassoing them around the begird. Gnaws at the bones like a grizzly bear. Dreadful indeed. Spits on the whetstone to lather up the sharpening end. Hones a mighty fine edge, enough to take down a whale. Zug stands leaning against the hosiery’s awning, his eyes glassed over, legs trembling.

It’s the second time that day he’s queued for something to eat; earlier that morning having waited for the fishmonger to open the back door and jettison hacked fish heads out into the trash, his hands up to the elbow moiling through offal. When he was a boy his parent sent him away to school, a cinderblock edifice with stained glass windows and a playing field that stretched further than the eye could see. Never again did he see or hear from his da and ma. Hanging on by a yarn the sun blazes above the dirt-poor earth, a crow aureoling on the horizon. Zug watches the crow circling overhead, the hosiery’s awning cricketing under his weight. He bites down hard on a button of gristle, his teeth working like a slaughterhouse saw.

Under the Altar

He laid his feet on the floor and stood up, his knees buckling like keel wood. ‘damn if I can make a fist without flinching’ he mumbled, the cigarette dangling from his lip like a hanged paper doll, the spent match fizzing sulfur. Reaching across the bedstead he grabbed hold of the post, his fingers rigoring the catch on the night table. He opened the drawer and walked his fingers along the bottom. He could feel the glove pushed up against the screw holes. His thumb scaling the silver buttons he grabbed hold of the middle finger and charily tugged the glove free. He swooned backwards, the juniperus smell of the glove reminding him of his mama’s temper and burst veins. The day his mother abandoned him he wailed and fussed until the rector’s assistant picked him up and carried him into the church. He lived in a box under the altar until he was old enough to fend for himself, his mamma’s glove the only thing he had to remember her by. When he was strong enough to stand on his two feet the rector sent him off into the world, telling him ‘don’t let anyone fill your head with nonsense…and stay close to the shoulder, may God be with my boy’. His hat aureoling his scarlet face he set out into the world, the sun a handbreadth from the top of his head.

Myles Crawford

As it was the end of the feasting season and the churches were preparing for winter bible studies and no one within earshot, no matter how they strained, could hear the bells clanging in the belltower and as the sky was gray bitter, the clouds corralled against the horizon, and no one save for the street sweeper, who was up and about tending to his sweeping duties, duties he took great pride and satisfaction in, and no one knew what time it was because the clock in the clocktower had stopped ticking, the hands having detached from the face, and the vergers had put the anointing ciborium away, placing it on the topmost shelf behind the altar, no one save for the street sweeper knew what to do, save for dream of next year’s feasts and the red-faced look on the rector’s assistant as he thought up new ways to get the attention of the young curly-haired boy who every Sunday sat ramrod straight in the first pew facing the altar box. That day the sun set 2 hours earlier than usual, falling from the sky like a fiery bird.

“Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face…” (Ulysses James Aloysius Joyce). He awoke with a start, his legs choked in bed linen. Looking up across the wall to the ceiling he noticed the plaster flaking at the corner, a gray water stain making a seam with the ceiling lamp. ‘everything is everything…’ he mused. Thoughts brought to mind other thoughts, the old woman with the spoiled apple face, the smell of damp clothing and bräken lye, his da’s starched shirts, the elbows table-shined, things, that were he not abed staring at the ceiling, would surely not find their way into his thoughts.

Imbecile

He threw a hail of birdseed into the air and watched the pigeons tumbling wildly over his head. Next to the bust of King Olaf next to the merry-go-round sat an imbecile counting time. The imbecile made a whooshing sound with his fingers against the leg of his corduroy trousers, choroids of blood exploding under the half-moons of his fingernails. The imbecile had come to see the Herschel Liege Pantomime Troop, and if he were lucky have the bearded lady sign his cap. As he knew no one in town he kept to himself, sleeping on a bench in the park behind the aqueduct and eating the crusts of bread he kept in his corduroy pant’s pocket. He stared at the bust of King Olaf then at the pigeons then at the bust, his attention rarely held for more than a few seconds. Reaching into his pant’s pocket he retrieved a crust of bread, the corners green with mould. Breaking it into equal portions he swallowed each piece whole, his throat tightening like an angry fist. In his other pocket he carried a red silk glove with gold stitching and a whalelike (see Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings, ‘Animals in the Form of Spheres’) crest on the forearm, for the glove was long, reaching above the wrist to the elbow. ‘never before have I witnessed such baboonery!’ exclaimed the Witness. ‘and on the steps of the holy shrine… shame on you boy, shame!’ The imbecile ran like the wind, his pockets turned out, the red silk glove with gold stitching trailing from his pant’s pocket like a nosebag.

As it was the day before the Feast of the Lamb, and no one save the harridan’s sister had bothered to ask the rector’s assistant if they could rent the church basement, and seeing as the two loathed one another, the feast was called off.

The cinema screen took up the whole end of the block. Held in place with iron tetrads and bailing wire the screen stretched across the median like a matron’s sheets held tight between two nuns. The street sweeper stood astride his cart cracking pecans with his hole puncher, his jacket nickeled with shells.

Logroño de Pisón

The Óglaigh Abstentionists convene Wednesdays and Fridays in the basement of the Church of the Blessed Sinner. Not sure what to do with the hymnal he slid it back in the hidey-hole and crossed himself three times. Unaccustomed as he was to paying attention to braggarts he sat quietly in the pews tallying numbers in his head. A stitch in time is worth nine. All square roots lead to one. Logroño de Pisón and Armando Ejércitos, mathematicians held in the highest regard by árbitros and sabios, say that all square roots lead back unto themselves; and any and all other posits are nothing more than schoolboy nonsense. ‘nonsense!’ shouted the Witness, ‘all square roots lead unto God’. ‘rabble-rouser’ hissed the man in the hat. ‘always trying to make a fish out of a loaf of bread’. He sat quietly with his hands folded on his lap, the oniony smell of incense assailing his thoughts. As the priest besieged the congregants with sin, turning the Ten Commandments into a sideshow heist, he watched as the rector’s assistant made faces at a young boy sitting at the front, his curly mane drooping in front of his eyes. ‘the things that go through peoples’ heads’ thought the man in the hat to himself, ‘all square roots lead unto God… shameful, scandalous… a vile corruption’. Drumming his fingers against the pew in front of him he thought of ways to knock the Witness off his Christian horse. ‘damn nonsense I say!’ He stared at the Witness like a dog on a bone, his jaw grinding. ‘look at him… a man on the abyss of ignorance yet he holds on still. Blessed be the sinner for he know’th his sin’. Taking the balled up paper out of his jacket pocket he began to read, his lips moving ever so slightly as if a gale were blowing from above.

Essex Bros.

She stopped in Colchester where she purchased a soda from the Essex Bros., the youngest brother fiddling with the cash register. Then out beyond the five-mile where she took up with a hermit with a monstrous cock and a monstrous nose. Not once did she think of her feeble child.

The monstrously cocked hermit gave her the clap, his hideous snout dripping like hung laundry. The vile spell inflicted her woman’s jaw. Not knowing how to decoct the pain, which came in floods and surges, she hanged herself from the rafters. Word beyond the five-mile has it that the monstrously cocked hermit amused himself with her until her skin unravelled and her teeth fell out. These are unpleasant times. They are. When the man in the hat heard about the hanged woman and her feeble child he fell to his knees and wept, an uneasiness coming over what little he had of a Christian soul. ‘a new hat. I must buy a new hat’ he said weeping snotgreenness out of his enflamed nose. Hidden under a pile of leaves that corkscrewed into cone he found the following:

The Man With The Pumpkin Head

“Once there was a man and on his shoulders he had, instead of a head, a hollow pumpkin. This was no great help to him. Yet he still wanted to be Number One. That's the sort of person he was. For a tongue he had an oak leaf hanging from his mouth, and his teeth were cut out with a knife. Instead of eyes, he had just two round holes. Back of the holes, two candle stumps flickered. Those were his eyes. They didn't help him see far. And yet he said his eyes were better than anyone's, the braggart. On his pumpkin head he wore a tall hat; used to take it off when anyone spoke to him, he was so polite. Once this man went for a walk. But the wind blew so hard that his eyes went out. He wanted to light them up again, but he had no matches. He started to cry with his candle ends, because he couldn't find his way home. So now he sat there, held his pumpkin head between his hands, and wanted to die. But dying didn't come to him so easily. First there had to come a June bug, which ate the oak leaf from his mouth; there had to come a bird, which pecked a hole in his pumpkin skull; there had to come a child, who took away the two candle stumps. Then he could die. The bug is still eating the leaf, the bird is pecking still, and the child is playing with the candle stumps”. (Robert Walser, Collected Stories, 1913)

Not sure what to make of it he balled it and stowed it in his pant’s pocket, a dog-eared corner sticking out like a plucked parsnip. ‘dear me’ he said to himself, ‘the things that go through peoples’ heads… astonishing’.

Windlass

He rang the bell with both hands, the wails of the feeble child muffled by the clanging. Using her body as a windlass she worked her way closer to the front, the rector’s assistant shouting orders from his bench above the masses. The first calf, its back legs trussed with wire, was dragged onto the pulpit, the stink of shit and turned milk stinging the eyes of those who had made it to the front. The feeble child’s mother watches as the first calf is brought to its knees, the rector’s assistant directing the carnage from his seat above the horror-struck mob. From the back of the crowd, flattened under hurrying feet, the feeble child’s wails can be heard, the bells deadening the calf’s cry. Not sure what to do or what she has witnessed, the mother of the feeble child cuts around the hobbled bled calf and down the side street next to the grocers, the unearthly wail of her child weakening behind her.

Spitting Apples

That summer the people of the five-mile threw a party in celebration of Bewley Stillorgan coming-of-age. They came by oxcart and cattle-car, from Castleknock, Ballsbridge and Lecumberri, arriving one after the other until the streets were overflowing with people.

He awoke with a start, his arms pinned behind his back. This was not unusual; it had happened once before… twice possibly, possibly more. He remembered going to a carnival the night before… or was it a celebration. He saw a woman carrying a feeble child under her arm, the child’s face red with exhaustion, the mother berating it for making unearthly noises. Struggling to get a better look the mother places the feeble child on the ground next to her, its head wobbling like a pumpkin on a fencepost. Craning to see above the crowd the mother kicks the feeble child with her shoe, the child falling over onto its back. Winching her way deeper into the mob, arms flailing, the mother leaves the feeble child writhing on the ground, its mouth spitting apples. He remembers hearing a deafening clank, like a train coming to a juddering stop, people dispersing every-which-where, the feeble child cowering. Swept up under scattering feet the feeble child raises its weakly arms over its head and wails. Returning home he couldn’t help but feel a sickening in his guts, a dull ache corseting through his bones like wildfire.

Doctor P. Recio

The man in the hat met El Pozo on a Saturday in front of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner. Or Sunday. El Pozo, his thoughts consumed with Bible Times, stared zealously at the crucifix hanged on the gallows of the priest’s choker. He kept repeating over and over again ‘the bank… rob it now… you must’ his voice rising and falling like a tailless kite in a windstorm. The Guests seat themselves. On the 17thof June 1967 Éamon Pádraig Pearse resigned his office a second time, and the fornicatress Vysocina Chokebore, pale with puerperal fever shrieked ‘el cielo está cayendo… escapar fugarse!’ Santarém Sanatório leapt on his bicycle and raced through the crowd, lurching and pitching, weaving in and out of people, some standing in two’s others in three’s, caroming and swerving between lampposts and curbstones, he peddled and peddled until his calves and thighs burned, then came to a halting stop, his hands gripping the handlebars like a mother her colicky child. Ho, “Mishear”, bring some more chairs in…

He’s got the face of a pig… give ‘em a Mickelbee’s by God! …the man in the hat held onto his druthers, lest he plunge impaled onto the thorn of despair. ‘there is no such thing’ said the Witness. ‘your just not feeling yourself is all’. ‘give it time’ added Dejesus. ‘it’ll all work out it will’. ‘it’s all a matter of good luck… something you need if you expect to make a go of it’ said the Witness scornfully. ‘its all about luck’ said Dejesus. ‘yes, a go of it’ added the Witness staring zealously at the crucifix hanged on the gallows of the priest’s choker. ‘give it time’. Turning on his left foot, his right foot lagging half a step behind, the man in the hat walked away, Dejesus and the Witness making faces at him as he made his way down the sideways. ‘fucking zealots! the man in the hat mumbled to himself. ‘its getting so a man can’t move without cunts getting in his face’.

“Night came, and with the permission of Doctor Pedro Recio, “Bewley Stillorgan” had supper.” (Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha)

Lodz Pabianice, Fernando António, Nogueira de Seabra, Alberto Pessoa, Christovão Falcão de Sousa, José Gomes Ferreira, Pancrácio de Pas, Dr. Chevalier Lindsay, Gresham William, Ticino Locarno, Sergipe Aracaju, Schug Grünenthal, no relation to Gunter Grünenthal, Fajardo Rafael, Utrecht Viagem, Éamon Pádraig Pearse, Vysocina Chokebore, Félix Davisson, BullCock’s, Joseph Benedikt and Karl Frailer von Eichendorff, the Cowes Brothers, João Goytortúa, Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro and El Pozo sat down to dinner with Bewley Stillorgan, the waitress bringing to the table the following:

-First Course-

Turtledove soup
Stewed pigs’ feet wrapped in tripe
Calf’s bowel in a creamy fennel sauce
Boar’s liver sautéed in urine

-Second Course-

St. Anne’s Eel, choice of poached or baked
Beef cock, choice of steamed or boiled
caramelized onions
sweet yams

-Dessert

Choice of Potato Pie
Or
A second helping of Stewed pigs’ feet wrapped in tripe

After dinner the men smoked plump San Domingian cigars and drank snifters of Château Guermantes Brandy and told fat Proustian lies. ‘its never to soon to turn over an old leaf’ said Pancrácio de Pas drumming ash onto his dinner plate.

The Twilight Singers

Der Revisor

João Goytortúa and Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro poach quail and redbreast in the gully between the five-mile and the stumps-end. Unbeknown to Uvalde Ribeiro, Goytortúa has arranging an assignation with the owner and sole proprietor of the Vincennes Glove Co. Goytortúa plans to buy into the business with an eye to cornering the needle and thread market. If Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro were to get wind of João Goytortúa’s plan he would beat him senseless, then leave him for dead in a culvert somewhere. As the chances of this happening are miniscule, neither João or Ribeiro having met, it seems frivolous to give it a seconds’ thought. Jesús Uvalde Ribeiro and João Goytortúa, however, will crop up from time to time, as the odds of two Christian names beginning with J appearing on the same page are astounding.

His left foot piloting him forward the man in the hat took in the beautiful and not so beautiful things of the world. ‘Nature makes the rules we... break them...’ he said, his right foot lagging behind his left. ‘then we die thinking we’ve changed something, when all we’ve done is pushed a few things around’.

Cocksfooted, El Pozo pushes his way up the sideways. The last time El Pozo came in from the hive (people came from all over for a jar of his honey. Or. El Pozo lives under a honey tree, the bees making combs in his mutinous unruly hair) he ate enormous platefuls of fish, boiled potatoes and blackened bread, washing it down with schooners of Mickelbee’s Ale. This time El Pozo had come to see his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés with whom he hoped to undo a noche triste. The year before El Pozo and y Altisidora met under a baker’s moon. El Pozo, in his haste to undo Pizarro y’s corset snapped one of the ivory stays, the pointed end stabbing the poor woman in the spleen. He had hoped to right this undoing by meeting with Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés on the steps of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner, where he planned to offer his heartfelt condolences for the pain he had caused her the previous year. With him, stowed at the bottom of his satchel, he carried a page torn from a book which he planned to bestow upon his love Altisidora Monroy de Pizarro y Cortés as a token of his undying love for her. The page read as follows:

GOVERNOR. Please sit down, ladies and gentlemen. Ho, “Mishear”, bring some more chairs in.

The Guests seat themselves.
(Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Der Revisor)

Bewley Stillorgan

The Cowes Brothers, makers of optics and telescopic devices, played pinochle with the recently departed wife of Joseph Benedikt, doctor. Luis, the younger of the Cowes brother, and Jorge the elder played pinochle for high stakes, doctor Benedik’s wife a casualty of the war they waged. The day the doctor’s wife beat the brother’s, the game lasting 17½ hours, Luis took his disgust and anger out on Jorge, the more timid of the two brothers. Later that evening Dr. Benedik’s wife, overcome with joy, forgot where she was going and fell, cracking her skull into smithereens. The Cowes Brothers, Luis the younger and Jorge the elder, overcome with grief said that if they’d known that letting the doctor’s wife win would end in such tragedy they would never have played so poorly. This story made the rounds in every hamlet, municipality, settlement and conurbation until it became so incredulous no one with a crumb of brains believed it ever happened, even Karl Frailer von who was so gullible he could be persuaded to believe the most outlandish things.

Bewley Stillorgan lives on the skids in a cardboard box. Having at one time lived in Castleknock, Ballsbridge and Lecumberri, where he leased three, two and one-bedroom bedsitters, and 27½ weeks in a sublet while in transit between Castleknock and Lecumberri, he had a gen of what living the good life was like. Now, Joseph Benedikt and Karl Frailer von Eichendorff having met the day before the Feast of the Assumption, which meant they hadn’t had time to walk the sideways, which would have allowed them to meet and make the acquaintance of such people as Bewley Stillorgan, had no idea who he was. Had they, however, the opportunity to meet him, or simply espy him from a distance, something Karl Frailer was more comfortable doing, they certainly would have seen the execrable conditions he lived in and perhaps offered him a handout, a basket of escarole, beans and a picnic ham, or a few coppers to spend as he chose. But as there is little to be gained from making assumptions, assumptions being nothing more than gossip after all, it seems frivolous to give it a seconds’ thought.

For no other reason than he felt like it the man in the hat threw a stone at a sparrow, striking it in the head. The wounded bird fell collapsing onto the bricks in front of him, its feathers spread out like a woolly rake. Not knowing why nor caring to he nudged the sparrow with his boot and said ‘never know when you’ll come crashing from the sky’. He nudged the bird a second time then went on his way, his thoughts soaring ahead of him.

BullCock’s

Attired in his brand new Wakean portmanteau, a gift from the proprietor of BullCock’s Haberdashery, he set about the day brimming. His hope quickly squashed when he came upon a man laying facedown on the kerbside, his forehead bruised purple, a yellow pallor eating away at his face, his nose hanging on by a thread, ears tethered to his jaw like crumbling petioles, a nervous tic tatting the skin around his mouth. ‘too many legumes’ he thought to himself, ‘or just plain unlucky’. He fell so hard he skinned his forehead clear down to the bone; grey brattling oozing from his skull. The man’s got a pig’s face. Last I saw him he was feeding crumbs to the pigeons, shirtsleeves rolled clear up to his shoulders. They say a man like that has a long way to fall. Never know when never know why. Just happens. BullCock’s a ripe old faggot, still has the dropsy from 100 years ago. People say he always has something up his sleeve the cunt does. Just never know what and when. Sad state of affairs as affairs go. And I seen my share I have. Now get off your horses and gimme a fiver ya cunt. Haven’t got all day. There’s pigeons to be fed.

They wether the goat, skinning it into two unquarreling halves. Looks silly stooped like that; you’d think it’d found its cud. He’s the one plays stopcock with the Aleman’s wife, damn fine sight the calves on here… naught nary a hair naught nary a vein. Clean right on down to the hackle, smooth as a yam. Gets one to thinking, what’re the odds of that? What’re the chances? Makes a man wonder. Now BullCock’s, there’s a ripe old faggot, all flabby and loose round the neck, could make an ascot of it. Straight out, I told ‘em I’d take the withers if he grabbed the haunches, best way I know to spill the head from the flank. Not a word of a lie, I seen my fair share I told ‘em. BullCock’s… pulls tripe like taffy, brooding pigeons alight on his shoulders. Last I saw him he was facedown on the kerbside, nose hanging on by a thread. Ripe cunt that cunt BullCock’s, yellow pallor eating away at his face. They say a man like that has a long way to fall. Long time since I felt obliged... prayers don’t come easy to god-fearsome half-men like me.

(Skin the goat hasn’t a care in the world). The man in the hat awoke with a start. The sun sitting low in the noontime sky told him that it was past 9 o’clock, the time he customarily arose from his embedment. Joseph Benedikt and Karl Frailer von Eichendorff met the day before the Feast of the Assumption, neither man having set eyes upon the other before that day. Upon meeting one another Dr. Benedikt, a doctor of the lower extremities, said to von Eichendorff ‘I see you wear a mechanical timepiece. Might I have a gander?’ Karl Frailer von replying toothsomely, as he was a man of fastidious oral hygiene, ‘why yes of course… and by all means take your time, it is a watch after all’. Heir doctor Joseph Benedikt held the timepiece up to his eye, ‘a fine piece indeed. Might I inquire as to its maker?’ ‘the Cowes Brothers, acquaintances of my dearly and recently departed wife’.

Feast of the Disfigured

The day the fornicatress Vysocina Chokebore arrived in town she was pale with puerperal fever. Félix Davisson, holding a pennant that read, ‘viva štiplavá’, arrived the next day. Then Morris Plaquenil, a tranquil yet in many ways contemptible man dressed in a checkerboard suit with matching socks; and on the heels of Davisson and Plaquenil, who arrived within seconds of one other, Plaquenil on the back of a dung wagon, Davisson in the company of two women in overflowing dresses, a stout ivory-skinned man with uneven teeth and a flaxen yellow jacket with a double-stitched pocket over his heart. ‘what’s in that pocket?’ asked one of the woman pointing disagreeably at his chest. ‘none of your business is what’ he said haughtily ‘now fuck off!’ As it was two days before the Feast of the Untainted, the Feast of the Disfigured convened and dissolved three weeks previous, the streets were overflowing with acolytes. There were hagglers and conmen, dough-faced children and dower hags, cheapskates and spoilsports, men dressed in black suits and women in red satin dresses, dogs and cats, chickens and roosters. Everywhere there were people shoving and jostling, some standing in crowds, others off by themselves watching on with awe and disgust. And flying overhead in the June-bug-thick sky a threadbare sheet with the words Zynischen Vernunft painted on it. His face clenched into a bloodied fist the Witness yelled ‘for the love of Christ, enough is enough!’

This can’t be. All this madness. There’s no need to agonize over it; it gets you nowhere anyhow. Diario de la Guerra del Cerdo, he’s a fucking swine! Plays stopcock the bung with the Aleman’s wife. Cunt’s like Himmler nickel and diming other sad cunts. Steal the food out of the pie-holes of babes… cunt. I’ll say! Enough to oblige a god-fearsome man to prayer. …watching on with awe and disgust. Happens before the sky falls catapulting I swear. June-bug-thick sky makes it hard to breath… dogs and chickens and roosters, what sheer joy! I swear it I swear an oath to it! Last time the Feast of the Disfigured a dozen, no two dozen beatings; rector beating assistant beating the lame and crippled.

Guasones - Dame

Zynischen Vernunft

On the 16thof June 1967 Éamon Pádraig Pearse resigned his office. I’ve had it up to here’ he said raising his hand above his head. ‘you raving people are stark mad’. That was the first and last that was heard or seen of Éamon Pádraig Pearse, the littlest dogman throwing an empty bottle at his departing head. Some people aren’t suited to a life of crossly drawn lines. The following year the Advent of the Cross was replaced with The Bleeding of the lamb, the crucifixion leitmotif causing a row among the townsfolk. A streamer with the words 'Zynischen Vernunft' painted on it flew by gabled to the tail of an airplane, the congregants taking it as a talisman of future sorrows, the Witness reading it as message from on high and Dejesus saying it was the work of a small group of nihilists who had access to an airplane and long bolts of cloth.

Written in pale blue almost turquoise ink, wet where the ink had bled through the paper leaving a birthmark-like smear on the back, the man in the hat read the following: ‘I KNOW WHERE THE MISSING GLOVE IS. IT’S RED AND HAS TWO BUTTONS MISSING ON THE WRIST’. ‘well I’ll be’ said the man in the hat. ‘never underestimate a man’s prudence and good nature’. He crumpled up the note, the corners sticking out like corn ears, and tossed it into the dustbin. ‘I could sleep forever’ mused the man in the hat sleepily. ‘yet I won’t. Not a wink’. His thoughts fell upon the letter and the puzzling hand that wrote it.

Juan Carlos Onetti - 1909 –1994

Salón J.L.Ortiz

Donning, and doffing when courtesy demanded, a hat fashioned from the supplest brown felt Éamon Pádraig Pearse sets about the day in song. His day will begin and end before he knows it; a rock crashing into his supple felt-covered head. Donning and doffing, eyes squinting into the sun, he fell upon the dogmen’s camp, the littlest dogman hurling a moss-covered stone at his unawares head. Stumbling and kilting off balance, Éamon Pádraig Pearse falls headfirst into the enormous sweltering lap of the biggest dogman, the littlest dogman jabbing him in the ribs with a stick.

On the 16th of June he could be found wandering the barrios looking for los Biblioteca Nacional, Salón J.L.Ortiz, where word has it cool bottles of Tic-tac are served between 7 and 8:30pm by a panicky waiter with Viking-large teeth."Everything is possible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things." (Robert Walser, 15 April 1878-25 December 1956) was written in block-letters over the entrance to los Biblioteca Nacional, Salón J.L.Ortiz, the panicky Viking-toothed waiter rubbing the sides of his head with the heels of his hands. Late as he was, Éamon Pádraig Pearse entered the front doors to the church, a jar-toothed congregant staring at him crossly, the rector’s assistant, his voice quavering, announcing the pledge of the indigent.

The man in the hat met Éamon Pádraig Pearse one fine summer day before the Advent of the Cross, neither man wearing a hat suitable for the occasion. Éamon Pádraig Pearse engrossing the man in the hat with stories of intrigue and adventure, about the bottles of cool Tic-tac to be had at los Biblioteca Nacional, Salón J.L.Ortiz and the funny way the Viking-toothed waiter rubbed his head with his hands.

Chapel Hat

He used to eat dog. ‘stop fidgeting’ barked the Witness. ‘you’re distracting me’. Now he eats mutton. And then he grew, growing taller and taller until the top of his head reached the last pencil mark on the doorframe. He used to fuck canaries (whippoorwill-whippoorwill) his mamma slapping him hard upside the head yelling ‘you’re a dirty selfish boy!’ On the Feast of the Calf he stole the rector’s chapel hat and hid it in the commode pot at the back of the closet. ‘that’ll show the cunt to box a boy’s ears when he’s facing the altar’ he whispered ‘keeps ugly babies from being made, heads all cone-shaped and blubbery’. Never know when a miscreant or a dullard’ll be born. Shit out two at a time, tiny misshapen bodies grappling for air. Twice in one day; left a beard of shit in the commode pot. Damn tricky trying to scrub the wee shits out of the hummer. Parturition hole torn right split down the middle, nurse raking entrails off the tabletop grimacing. Never can tell which end will come out first. Came out all mottled upside down, cut the spay-cord just above the placenta. Less blood-letting that way, easier on an aching back. Pulled ‘em out like taffy, legs all twisted bent outwards slightly. ‘you’re a dirty selfish boy!’ Now I’ll have to slap you upside the head hard, sassy dirty boy. That summer Lela found a diary behind the pumphouse. Hid there by whippoorwill or a crank hoping no one’d find it. “June 4th, my bleedings smell like alkahest and my cunt like shibboleth. Must tell mamma before the sky falls again.”

Shibboleth

The winter Lela had her first period the man in the hat grew a moustache, the harridan found a box of women’s gloves behind the Waymart and Dejesus arrived on a boat. Also that year the sky fell twice: on the Feast of the Calf and on the Sabbath. That winter Lela found her mamma’s diaphragm. Not sure what it was she asked her mamma, who said it was for keeping ugly babies from being made. Also that winter the legless man lost his other leg; the amputater sawing it off just below the hip. That winter the alms man bought a new cap; his old one too small for his expanding head. The Witness printed his first pamphlet: a call to heathens and cowards to come to the fold of the lamb. No one read the pamphlets so nobody came. That winter before the thaw, which usually came on the Ides of March, later the year the sky fell twice, the dogmen arrived in town riding on the backs of beasts, the littlest dogman pounding his breast like a kettledrum. The winter Lela had her first period the shamble leg man wandered into town, the world stopped rotating on its heavenly axle and Sepahan Buxton of Derbyshire lost his mind. Little did Lela know that her blood was an alkahest and her cunt a shibboleth.