Down with Higgledy-Piggledy-isms!
Down with the My Black Hen-esqueries of critical gaping!
Down with the squeezed-out perfectionism of egg-laying!
Down with Gentlemen in snot-color’d cravats!
(Down with the all allusive dew on the boatman’s brow!)
(Down with contraband dog!)
~
THE BLACK HEN
Hickety, pickety, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen;
Gentlemen come every day
To see what my black hen doth lay.
(Higgledy, piggledy, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
Sometimes nine, sometimes ten—
Higgledy, piggledy, my black hen.)
André Breton: “Poetry is the attempt to represent, or to restore, through screams, tears . . . those things or that thing which articulate language obscurely tries to express.”
Steve McQueen, “Deadpan,” 1997, video still
Greil Marcus: “. . . the mask is what in the nineteenth century came to be called the deadpan, the poker face: precisely what the coachman wipes off the rider’s face.”
