James Joyce

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

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Under the Snowflake, right under the discarded tea-cup in 'The Dead'

Her fingers toyed restlessly with the tea-cup, wondering if really she had stolen all of the thunder. Was it thunder? Or was it foot-tickling snow? She made that trinket sound as she placed the tea-cup, or rather, let it tip slightly to the right, into the saucer. It was a sound that reminded her of jewellery boxes, mother's necklace, a golden brooch. Perhaps with a real pearl. From a Dublin oyster.

Lightly, delicately, she touched the underside of the still warm porcelain. Were it real, she could have explained it. However, she swore that she felt, just for a second, the tiny chill of a snowflake there.

It took her back to that day, forty years ago, the untouched blanket of snow. The dog-prints. Early morning tip-toe. Under the mutton-grey sky, there she stood. So she was, she was. And now, the touch of cool ice. As fingernails on skin. When warm by that fire over there, over there, over there. And then there was the shrill porcelain smile of sound once more.

Take me with your chill lips, she pleaded. With a tremble, she clipped the tiny cup and it fell with a ready thump to the carpet. Was that a lovely joyful glimpse of snow?

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Porker's Ham and Grain-fed Eggs

The alms man likes Albacore tuna on single-wheat bread lightly toasted and left to cool. His grandmamma told him that the British preferred they’re toast stone-cool with whey curd on top. ‘They even have toast-racks’ she said ‘to sleeve the warm toast into’. ‘They like peanut butter on it?’ he asked. ‘Nope, just with curd and hard butter’ she said. ‘Not even a wee dram of jelly, grape or marmalade?’ ‘Just the way God made it, cold and hard to swallow’ she said, ‘and with curd and iced butter’. ‘Pads, you mean those wee pads of butter like you get at the fancy restaurants?’ he asked. ‘No, now listen for once, with hard-churned butter straight from the cows’ teat’. ‘Fancy, you mean fancy butter but from a fancy cow?’ His grandmamma gave him a stern dismissive look, the strings of her apron twiddling like nervous fingers round her waist, and went back to kneading a loaf of single-wheat bread.

Flue the spigot shit, the shot and narrow isn’t all it’s made out to be. Murmur stalk-stem, she isn’t all she’s made in to be. ‘Pads, you mean those wee pads of butter like you get at the fancy restaurants?’ he asked awake (all that offal awful, sluice-gate bilge, all that awful offal swirling down the drainpipe maw). Jimbo Mansard like Albacore tuna on single-wheat bread lightly toasted and left to cool. Me mama made it toast-side up with pads of wee batter and salted scrod.

(He wears a hatman’s hat, broad brimmed, felt brown and quail with feathers. He has on a haberdasher’s jacket, brownish gray with widespread lapels and a two-rose buttonhole. He rides a bicycle without a horn, flagon or bell. His trousers, brownish brown, are cinched round his ankles with tape; the cuffs tucked into his galoshes with object care).

‘I remember remembering that’ he said ‘and some other things, too’. ‘Do you own a bicycle?’ ‘Yes, two.’ ‘Two, my goodness two, how odd indeed, two’. ‘One for jockeying about the other for cycling errands and the so’ said he. ‘I like Porker’s ham and chicory pate’. ‘You do, yes I see you do, how strange and offal indeed’. ‘Porker’s ham and grain-fed eggs such a delectable parish treat’. ‘Me? Me I prefer them boiled yolk-side up with a wee poke of salt and paprika’. ‘You’re a cad you are, a real cad so you are’. ‘I prefer card, a real card so I am’. ‘I’m a billfold off the dim and sparrow, just a wee smidgen’. ‘So you say, so it is, it must be so you say, so it is, most certainly is’. ‘So I say, so it is I suppose’. (She drank Jonestown Gin from a tea cup, closeting it between the sewing basket and the laundry hamper, and swore she’s never read Neruda, though she did once tip the mailman at Christmastime. Her youngest child Rudy died from rickets, his legs so twisted and deformed that he had to have braces coddled between them, a piece of wood the size of a doorframe secured in place with metal screws and washers). ‘That’s a strange one, strange indeed’. ‘Yes, I’d say so myself, strange indeed, indeed I’d say’. ‘A billfold off the dim and sparrow so you say’ he said asking. ‘Just a wee smidgen, not enough to cause a tilt and rowdy’ he answered in saying.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Pullman's Lager to Salve the Stain

Mostly I think of gemstones lips, a bower-rag of wooly warmth. Scone-flat palm turned heath narrow (I wish I dreamt of fairies and children’s smiles, sun and rain) where Biggs shone its glisten light. I smell the anise-root of scalloped skin, braids of wild cherrystone, a (tinker’s tankard) of Pullman’s lager, crackle lime and hawker’s spit, Biggs cinching mansard-peg (I wish I slept in Browning Manor, cuckold cold, a bower-rag to stave the hole). Sluice offal down the swirling wail, Abbott’s flue the spigot shut, tamping spirits, bread and Paxton (I wish I dreamt of fairies and children’s smiles, sun and rain) cinch taut the mansard-peg, a bower’s-rag to salve the stain.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Registration Mark on the Tail End of a Jug Placed on a Table in 'The Dead'

Did Joyce trace his finger over the jug on the old oak table in 'The Dead' - you know the one, the one where the snowflake landed. The one where I gently rubbed my fingers that time. Dear Jimmy, you made the touch of gently lifting the green slip-in-my-arm gestured handle of it. Up above you, you looked at the watery mark. Shimmery fish-eye blue slitty lines. What was it you said? Moulded. Moulded into the delicate shine of raise and bumps. Such a glorious snow-storm that evening. Don't you drop it, you whispered into my ear. The raised pears of porcelain. Running your fingers over it. Our wet mornings in the dew at Howth, it told me of fingers there. Seed-cake - tiny diamond chips, enamelled fingers that lay there on white skin. The two little pin-holes where they fire the glaze.

Replace me with a plaque. What this is, he said, was a rare and beautiful piece. I only paid little for it. If it happened to be rarer than that, you would keep it forever. You held my cheek in your palm. I was embossed with your letter. Gold and in the light, I never felt so beautiful as there, my dear Jimmy boy. 1910, and the delicate, amateur chippings were so carved that they left me shaped as joy. William, John, Henry, mum, sister, working those waters. We searched for Jack in the puddles and pools there at the tip of Martello. We looked down. Oaky and secure. I slip inside. Feel raised, outwardly. Witty and brown eyed, I look so rose-pip. I love my darling very, very much, I breathed into my Jimmy's ear. As you put down the vase, the raised places amongst carved, detailed wood, we rubbed sides. We daubed our love on each other's cheeks with lips. Un-like anything. Competently done, you smiled.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Gerty - Part the Second

I know that my feathered leg was the cause of the distance. The boredom of knowing that I was not what was wanted. A craggy gap that was always to be left open.

I felt him move away.

Into the sea-sky.

Into the distance.

My pale hands shaking sand, with anger and sadness.
Knowing that I wasn't needed anymore.
Pebbles clicking for a moment.

From a million years before.