Jedediah Smith

Logue 1. To Attica then, from pen to peninsula and islands of captains come cross the sea, returning in his wickedness, Pepkin drives East along the mother road under the Gateway and over the Hudson Verrazzano seeking a clear zone through which to pierce the vital membrane of the city in a spot where his lonely name will allow no one in but him so he can begin his travels round the old neighborhood.

Logue 2. High atop a penthouse balcony, Pepkin among anemones brunches on pomme-granatum right of lotuses and left of chrysanthemums until the owners come home and phone the Flying Squad whereupon he lights out ahead of arrest, hitching a garbage truck to Coney pier, under which he breakfasts on white fish, white dough, white wine, and anything else his fine furry friends feel inclined to share.

Logue 3. Pepkin makes horizontal love that afternoon to a blurry Madonna in St Patrick’s in full view of the choirboys to educate them on the spiral shortcomings of Byzantine Revival, Romanesque Revival, and Gothic Revival verticalism.

Logue 4. Riding on a stolen police horse, he joins a parade for the blind and leads them to great acclaim along Broadway until he takes a hard left on 8th and stands them all to egg creams at the Gem Spa.

Logue 5. Twilight Pepkin in Washington Square sips letheum with Star 80 and Criminal to celebrate their commission to spackle George’s stipples with spray cans of taint.

Logue 6. After walking twenty-seven blocks, he sleeps in an alley in a cardboard box large enough to accommodate an entire family of glass sharpeners.

Logue 7. The biomechanics of Pepkin’s head fail him: his eyes wink into migraines, his inner ears hiss with tinnitus and their canals slosh with vertigo, his nose contends it detects diesel fumes in spite of the fresh breeze, and his tongue demands constant satisfaction, but within this barrage of pain and lies, his mind shrinks back from its bone cavern to float freestone in a vastness grand enough to quarry for all the days remaining before the stress of rusting machinery collapses the walls of this failing promised land mine.

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