…{he found} the man in the hat found a scrap of foolscap on which was written the following, ‘Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth’.[1] Unsure what to do with it he folded the paper in four and placed it back on the bench where he found it, thinking as he did, ‘…surely an impetuous regeneration is no worse than kick in the teeth…’. The man in the hat strummed the tin-reed with his thumb, his da cursing ‘…take that damn thing out of your mouth, not in this house you won’t...’. He placed his shiny new Jew’s harp on the chair next to his grandmamma, her legs frowned into bows, and watched his da scraping out his cob, mealworms of charred tobacco falling onto his lap, no one caring whether he was happy or sad.
The skié felle balkars back inrô the night, tripang on its own monceau skirt. Everything that falls was once unfallen, he thought to himself. His head ached like a sprained ankle, the bruise taking up ¾ of his face. The last time his da hoofed him in the back of the head he fell over flat onto his back, his spine tingling like bleached cod. His da had no patience for complainers, saying a man does what a man does not a cause he wants to, but on account of its what he has to do, plain and simple. Kicking people in the head was his da’s way of making a point, whether the kicked head needed it or not. He figured his da had had a poorly childhood on account of his own da used to kick him in the head for sassing, and his ma having the curse more often than not, laying the blame on his da for pushing too hard and squeezing her against the headboard so an she couldn’t catch her breath much.
His da had a dog with a crooked tail that slept in the woolshed behind the house, the dog blinder than a cave of bats. His da had a temper meaner than a cut sow or a wild dog. Thinking back over those days, some so long they seemed like weeks, the man in the hat felt smaller than his ma’s dry period. Days as long as weeks, his granddad pulling crud radishes out of the back garden, his palms scored with dirt, his grandmamma, her skirts choppy with cow piss, pealing leafs away from brown cabbage, the sky threatening no rain. Hurricane season came late that summer (El director del Instituto de la Lengua, Gonzalo Santonja, destacó además la organización para finales de año de una muestra sobre el artista burgalés Modesto Ciruelos visto por José Hierro, Eugenio D´Ors y Camilo José Cela). His da paid the washerwoman 25 cents an hour to clean the woolshed, the dog having shit all over the sawdusting.
The skié felle balkars back inrô the night, tripang on its own monceau skirt. Everything that falls was once unfallen, he thought to himself. His head ached like a sprained ankle, the bruise taking up ¾ of his face. The last time his da hoofed him in the back of the head he fell over flat onto his back, his spine tingling like bleached cod. His da had no patience for complainers, saying a man does what a man does not a cause he wants to, but on account of its what he has to do, plain and simple. Kicking people in the head was his da’s way of making a point, whether the kicked head needed it or not. He figured his da had had a poorly childhood on account of his own da used to kick him in the head for sassing, and his ma having the curse more often than not, laying the blame on his da for pushing too hard and squeezing her against the headboard so an she couldn’t catch her breath much.
His da had a dog with a crooked tail that slept in the woolshed behind the house, the dog blinder than a cave of bats. His da had a temper meaner than a cut sow or a wild dog. Thinking back over those days, some so long they seemed like weeks, the man in the hat felt smaller than his ma’s dry period. Days as long as weeks, his granddad pulling crud radishes out of the back garden, his palms scored with dirt, his grandmamma, her skirts choppy with cow piss, pealing leafs away from brown cabbage, the sky threatening no rain. Hurricane season came late that summer (El director del Instituto de la Lengua, Gonzalo Santonja, destacó además la organización para finales de año de una muestra sobre el artista burgalés Modesto Ciruelos visto por José Hierro, Eugenio D´Ors y Camilo José Cela). His da paid the washerwoman 25 cents an hour to clean the woolshed, the dog having shit all over the sawdusting.
[1] Bruno Schulz, "Mityzacja rzeczywistosci", Republika marzen. Warszawa: Chimera, 1993: 49-50, Translated by John M. Bates
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