A man sits under the Waymart clock savoring his Ploughman’s lunch. His day began and ended in sleep. He awoke sleeping and slept until nightfall, when he awoke and fell back asleep until he awoke sleeping the next day. He slept until he couldn’t sleep anymore, then slept until nightfall when he awoke and fell back asleep until he awoke sleeping the next day. In those few minutes when he was not sleeping, or awaking to fall back asleep, he savored his Ploughman’s lunch under the Waymart clock. That morning when he awoke asleep he decided to stay awake until he’d had the chance to savor his Ploughman’s lunch in one fell swoop. By nightfall he’d fallen back asleep, his Ploughman’s lunch open on his lap unwrapped from its waxpaper. The world being as it is, a cold and contemptible place, the man moves on, leaving a half-eaten lunch and no fond farewells.
The day the meek man ate his lowly pie the man in the hat bid goodbye to his childhood, never to revisit his youth again. When he was a boy, a puckish boy, the man in the hat’s grandmamma scolded him for being rascally. His granddad told him the story about the whore’s glove a local billet found in the forest behind the house. It belonged to Marie Joséphine de Rose, a tinsmith’s daughter who lived with her parents in a house made of stones and mud. The glove became known far and wide as the glove that changed the town it was found in, causing such a kafuffle that the rest of the world wanted their own whore’s glove. The village of Les Trois-Îlets claimed sole ownership of the glove. The Comité de salut set up a public registry for people who claimed ownership of the glove, the number of people making such claims tripling in three months. Two men from the Jacobin Club and three from the Maximilien François Marie Club refused to accept the codification, maintaining the Deacon who codified the glove was insane, and furthermore in cahoots with the village of Les Trois-Îlets. The man in the hat’s granddad finished the story with a poem he’d composed especially for the occasion:
Marie Joséphine de Rose’ slatternly glove
Fought over by Jacobean and Maximilien
The cause of so much hatred and love
Worn by the Countess at her first cotillion
Mistaking a jig for a crowning, a Deacon for a slattern, it was best his granddad kept to simpleminded things, things that didn’t require an iambic pentameter or a second thought.
The day the meek man ate his lowly pie the man in the hat bid goodbye to his childhood, never to revisit his youth again. When he was a boy, a puckish boy, the man in the hat’s grandmamma scolded him for being rascally. His granddad told him the story about the whore’s glove a local billet found in the forest behind the house. It belonged to Marie Joséphine de Rose, a tinsmith’s daughter who lived with her parents in a house made of stones and mud. The glove became known far and wide as the glove that changed the town it was found in, causing such a kafuffle that the rest of the world wanted their own whore’s glove. The village of Les Trois-Îlets claimed sole ownership of the glove. The Comité de salut set up a public registry for people who claimed ownership of the glove, the number of people making such claims tripling in three months. Two men from the Jacobin Club and three from the Maximilien François Marie Club refused to accept the codification, maintaining the Deacon who codified the glove was insane, and furthermore in cahoots with the village of Les Trois-Îlets. The man in the hat’s granddad finished the story with a poem he’d composed especially for the occasion:
Marie Joséphine de Rose’ slatternly glove
Fought over by Jacobean and Maximilien
The cause of so much hatred and love
Worn by the Countess at her first cotillion
Mistaking a jig for a crowning, a Deacon for a slattern, it was best his granddad kept to simpleminded things, things that didn’t require an iambic pentameter or a second thought.
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