James Joyce

This is a site for ReJoycing. For all things Joycean.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

A Whitelined Deal Box

His grandmother contracted syphilis, treponema pallidum, from a one-night stand. His greater aunt Alma-May came down with Cervicitis, for which she was prescribed Dooley’s unguent and a mild pyloric. His great aunt Alma was fit as a fiddle, never having to fend off Chlamydial trachomatis, gonorrhoeae or the ague. Having said this saying anything more would be frivolous. Oh so merciless oh so. Dear auntie hadn’t the faintest why the gonorrhoeae visited her on Wednesdays and Friday’s after fish, just the damndest thing. Now the Dooley’s have a real badger of a salve, made from mercury and crapped on doilies. A cure-all for Chlamydial trachomatis and those nasty pole marks. Auntie did the most marvelous things with catalogue stickers and unsafely pins. She could jerryrig a busted up radio or make hats from simple things she found sitting round the house. Me dear auntie could do most anything, make a cat look like a dog and a dog like a cat, those sort of uneven things. It wasn’t till the whooping got the best of her, knocking her ass over teakettle, an unsightly sight. "A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time." (J.J.) Them were the days, nosegays and wee crepe paper hats with windmill tops and eye-fetching baubles. Looking back onto it now, how strange indeed. So she said, she did, even if the words that came spiraling out of her mouth were covered in spittle and dead flies that hadn’t the wherewithal to see the screen door for the meadow. She could jerryrig a can of tinned beans, surefire, way out beyond where the naked eye can’t see a thing. A surefire cure-all for Chlamydia and rector’s bowel. All she ever wanted was one of those soft-seat stools, a Tavistock Venus Close Coupled Toilet with Soft Close Seat, sold exclusively by Plumbworld, the world’s leading maker of soft-seats. Never did quite get the fetch and gather, not that I’m suppose to get much of anything at all. The world’s leading manufacturer of soft-seat toilet seats, known world round. Some days, nighttime, too, I can’t help but think about her bottom trapped between the clip of the soft-seat and the front of the cistern, all that yammering and all get out, sad as cancer and frail children.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

River-run, run, run, run.

Climb up onto the bridge and look down into the sparkling water. See how it runs!
Climb down into the water and wash your feet in it and see your face reflected. In years to come, you will come here and watch the bubbles froth and distort your once-beauty. Still the waters and soft your face until it resembles nothing more than a crescent of shine. How beautiful!

Swirl it with your fingers and watch the spinning eyes. They falter that dip in here. Blue crystal, it is so chill to watch it disappear. The soft clinging of it around the tip. Still wedded to the depths.

Pebbles roll and render the banks to nothing. Silty, yet fresh as ever. Rubbing up against minnows, your noses darting. Banks and beds. It's more like the old you, the passion and the fire it brings after reading the depths. Keep up the dark heeds, needs.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Clack Clang

Caparica Setubal, Villmergen Aargau and Billancourt Ile-de-France. He’s a mad cock, that one, gilded edges, epaulettes and knags heads, must have a bilks’ full of ‘em in his closet. Always one for the hello fader blest be thy mane, fucking blasphemous cunt he is. Hour fader coo art in haven mallow be thy game. …cad bastard, no three words about it. Quick with the plate, clack clang, a pocketful of God’s shillings, all smarmy, the brides skirt shimmied up to her armpits, sad sight indeed, awfully. I’d have it at him, the back of the skull, baby soft all kicked in… …for the love of it, awfully fucking awful…

That morning the man in the hat cooked a skillet-fried breakfast, bread-heels braised in skillet fat, onions, boiled, two runny eggs and ¼ of a pigs’ shoulder, and a cup of brown pail water culled from the rain barrel on the stoop outside his lean-to flap, and a hunk of farmers’ cheese. Picking up the morning news the man in the hat reads an advertisement for Pappy’s Spirit Gum, $ 27.50 per 1-liter bottle, postage extra. His eyesore eyes bloodshot, he places the now folded paper on the table next to his chair and sighs ‘…smarmy bastards…’.

On the transom over the door to the Greek Deli is a sign that reads, Olive Oil is God’s Oil, and beneath that a drawing of two dogs barking at a man, his pant’s leg torn clear off his cuff. The man in the hat has his suspicions that the owner of the Greek Deli sells dog meat, butcher’s paper soaked through with urine and blood. Hour fader who’s in haven… looking upwards up, the sky darker than yesterday’s death, he looks round his lean-to for a matchstick, his mouth forming a perfect O… ‘…shimmied up to her armpits, awfully fucking awful…’.