The Most Gentle Hobo, and Other Tales
From Plastic Tub
A collection of twenty prose poems by Stimes Addisson, self-published in 1947 and re-issued, lavishly illustrated by William Flintrock, in 1965.
Excerpted
A Crablike Demeanor
Walking down Main Street, choked by dust, charges of infidelity to the village purpose are murmured hesitantly among the milling crowd; it would seem as though certain indiscretions on the part of the parish priest have come to light involving the soft yellow glow of the candles and the daytime spirit of the confranternity which seems to disappear even as the shadows lenghten at the end of the day.
"Have you got a cigarette ..?"
"And that's when you tossed him in the dugaree bin?"
"Yes."
"That's all he said, got a cigarette?"
"Yes. That's all."
The spotlights make turtles less immune, and the hands of the man who shoots them are trembling. In the reeds, beneath the sky, as if inside an enormous shoe box, there is the bloody the stump. All gather to have a gander and a poke. A pillar of clear acrylic holds the immutable remains. A plaque nearby reads: "The Hot Faced Punching Bag, again, and it loses momentum. Cain Cann, 1002."
A car door in the salad, they roar with laughter, the drunken chambermaid. In her soiled panties is writ the arrangement of Word, etched excrescently: The Torpidity of Deldoe.
