Los Casa Grande Cochineal

His head ached like a leg caught in a bear trap. Last night while everyone who could slept, the alms man sat under a fat yellow moon counting backwards to 1000, penance for all those nights puling between saltlick thighs, love-struck with the wound that gave breath to life. He dreamt of los Casa Grande Cochineal and the night he drew blood from a pimp's lip. He dreamt of a time when a lady of the evening was worth a fistfight and a blackened eye. He had memories of bad memories, whitefish salad and stinkweed gin. He dreamed he was falling awake, his eyes spackled to the back of his skull, a paperweight heaviness in his arms and legs.

The alms man awoke with a stitch in his side, his alms cap turned brim-side up, his arms and legs pinned to his cardboard mat. ‘…what a horrid night…’ he said to himself, the hardness of the world biting and stinging and swiping at the top of his head. The florist Beeves makes Quirt-stemmed nosegays, stems and blossoms to tickle the fancy. Ignacio Boston dreamed he was the florist Beeves, pinning together eye-fetching bouquets and nosegays. In his thoughts the alms man thought up imaginary people with imaginary jobs, florists and quay-popes and people with flashy coats and unfashionable shoes. (In Ituzaing children dance round a crackling bonfire, Druid waifs, whore awe whore awe!, madfooting round and round, the flames flickering, crackling).