CAUTION AHEAD — CREAMED ASPARAGUS: A whiff of épater le bourgeois crossed with nostalgie de la boue i.e. Eighties effluvia insulting propriety, decorum, decency, good taste, all the sensitivities of right-thinking persons i.e. Depraved frippery from a “low dishonest decade” blessedly relegated to our collective past i.e. Horrid, callous, vestigial hiccup of barbarism from an era put firmly behind us i.e. Visceral venting of frolicking, wonky stinkpots i.e. That’s as much unctuous apologia pro vita sua as I can proffer for wrenching this text-stream from its well-earned obscurity. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

[From CB to HH & JMN:]

I sat relishing the feel of the florescent light on the cheap fabric of my imitation Henry Grenthel shirt and listened as Teena’s phone conversation wafted up the ventilation system like the plaintive cry of a chicken hawk across the dark, gothic prairie. Suddenly, I was borne on the wings of remembrance to those cherished moments when, a boy of twelve, I would sit pensively in Grandmother’s parlor rocker and listen as, upstairs, she thrilled herself with the tapered end of the late Mr. B***’s powder horn. I knew that I would soon be required to don the ill-fitting WWI Army uniform and, bowl of creamed asparagus in hand, climb the stair….

[From HH to CB & JMN:]

They arrived, first one, then the other. Pristine envelopes lent them a superficial dignity, but they stank a stray-cat scent of expired literary license. First there was JMN, with his thinly-masked discourse on uvula angst. On his heel CB, cesspool-of-consciousness’s unclaimed master. I should have known there’d always be some punk poe-taster writing into town. They were rank all right, but not amateur; they were prose. How to retort? “I think — therefore iamb?” No…, that would be putting Descartes before the horses….

(c) 2018 JMN.