It was just then at the poets' annual "Laudanumb for Table" dinner, that big
Jimmy Spazcock
had chance to speak alone with the gaudy faux Palissyware dish of Turnips
Sagetrieb, saying,
"Methinks, I'll pass on the tradition this once," then making a big show of
handing the plate on to Merriam
Kornfoddle who had just put out a cigarette in her beets and mint and was
mouthing some twaddle
about the genial concupiscibility of horoscopes to Henry Leggewurmarre and looking a bit like a
widget-gidget of a Wadjet in her black lace capotain and uraeus, and her spitting didn't help, but
Henry didn't seem to mind at all, even seeming to gasp every time her mouth made the oo sound.
Yes, nobody was giving Jimmy a second look. "Gooey turnips," sighed big Jimmy. "They smell funny.."
He loaded a double helping onto his already fatuous platen, and lifted his heavy spoon to scoop.
Suddenly, a terrific wind lept through the room banging the shutters on their
chappy hinges, and a
deep booming voice cried out, "A HORNED SHEEP, A CRUTCH OF ENTRAILS, THESE
BODIES FOREVER HEARING SACERDOTEUM, LEATHERN MONEY BAGS, NOTHING
INSIDE, THE BAGS THEMSELVES A LEATHERN MONEY. COME TO REST.."
Percy Slainporct began to froth at the mouth and chatter about a "pound of
griffin's flesh for a puff
of pi's analichts"... Diana Witherspeep said rather dryly, "I've heard there's
a haunted old Greyhound
station just up Burrow street. Maybe it's E. Roy Fitzgerald on a loa of some
sort?" Dr. Rahu Zipperlog
stood up and tried to calm the rising hubbub of voices by singing an old
Edwardian ditty:
Happy's the Love which meets return
Happy's the flesh which does not burn
Happy's the head which does not know
Happy's the thread which does not show
Curling round the innocent sty
every garden bench awaits an eye..
Suddenly a little golem stood up out of the blood pudding and began to
soft-shoe.
Whiskey Beaumont downed the last of his port and stood up to dance along. Thus
another year went by, much like any other year at the poets' annual "Laudanumb for Table"
dinner held in Foxfab, Tennessee, just up the street from Gitchipegumi River basin boat
launch...
