Highroads lead from river's bone to curl around the backfoot of the market's edge - porters scuffle wallets out and in and out of trousers, howling taut and with a baritone the day's off ticket, two for one,  apenny on the dollar, get 'er 'ere and squared, a lacket's brim gone full with treasure.
	Let the June sing out, he's bellowing. He's calling out for payers, slaggard runabout made crawling for their homes as night'll settle in. The lovers pinch their coins in hand and finger, puppied eyes and pennies sliced, a ruddy handjob in the rear, cold spurt of heaven.
	Mother Mary lies about, her thighs all splayed and nationwide, her frame engorged and horizontal, right knee up and cocked at angle, robe and silk in leaf of gold play lining to her nightblue fruit: the curves of Maiden proper. She is lit up with a crossing hatch of timed and metered spots and shifting four and four in groups of three to dance the blessed virgin in the eyes of passing by, head or two on up and risen, God at dusk in female flesh and lust make way the path for morning come on home. The mother's stuccoed fast and grottoed there to shoulders at the market's perch -  the tops of haunched up tenement aspread, the highway rigid, parallel and running North directly, notched there here and all about by crossing roads, the lattice sideward made a frenzy, corner footwide, veins of road struck septa, penta, chasing dawn in East and West at center, North runs true on Main and Mary marks her locus, near and naked crux of all, the cold white Lady Gilded's got her eyes down South and yawning, bones in ruckus: city's near to sleep and got her lady all but seldom fed.
	Morrow's rising. Sound the bell, she says. Awake the dreary, wither all, keep glad your stone's been over, rolled and done.
	'The boy's got crooked teeth.'
	On Georgie's block a corner's turned from Main to Sheldon, just a little stub of road and dead at end. The stench is fever, rat and naphtha. Jezebel. The pus of chafe.
	'The boy's got naked teeth, got little holes dug in 'em, little things with made up mind to sup the gold from out his lining.'
	'It's the sugar, hell, it's gotta be.'
	'Maybe boy's got lips around a bottle.'
	'A thing had just to be and after all. The call of sin in men.'
	'The boy come round once year or two gone by and told me he's got crooked teeth, feels all the buggers crawl from out they hold. Them ugly fuckers, wrench 'em deep from out they rest, he says. He calls 'em as all 'at, cold ugly sonsabitches, raw as sin. Says
	'Doc, it's you is pullin teeth?
	'I shackle them, I say. I keep 'em fixed from runnin' loose.
	'He comes up close and gets a look, his eyes on I and I, run up and down, some mind between us gone all white and blank, his gum in shackles, pinching low and wide a ruffle in a run along his slacks. He says he does, in blood in eye, says
	'Doc, I'll need that paper signed.'
	'And so it was. For crooked teeth.'





	'An ugly mess, the lot of them, all Swiss and queso, eaten up. The boy might twist electric, teeth gone first and into waiting.'
	'Waiting?'
	'Holed up in a throat.'
	'And yes.'
	'It's days gone past and there is I, gone down to some old place just for a snort, I see the boy. I ask him how his teeth gone crook.'
	'He told you then.'
	'The boy he sighed and made 'im round his eyelids, shoulders perky up, a little worm he was. He got to gettin' tired, says he.'
	'Lazy.'
	'Tired. Runabout. 'Im says he's empty, empty, love.'
	'And what then of the full man?'
	'So the boy came round to fix 'im for a can of sugar. Coca Cola, rocks preferred.'




	'Jezebel. The nightblue fruit. The cauter in her eyelids. It's day gone past and I and I made headlong to the grave.'
	'And God? The son? The birth and after?'
	'It's placenta's home and manna. All the strewn about, their caskets hollow, prey for mouth. The Eaters. You and I the same.'
	'The day cannot be you and I.'
	'And see.
	'It's time is just a marching out and in and out. You pass from throat to throat and lie there raw, all skin of pig and genitalia pink, all bloat and barley, blistered, stenched and as the damp beneath the tenement. It's you're Mary's stool in health and sickness, pecking out her orders to an absent God in love with what's made jealous.'
	'Reilly. Cut her hair. You're babbling again.'
	'The ancient story. Drama. Silence.'
	'Reilly's pecker in a blender.'
	'Send 'er endfirst 'ome ta Mama. Dearest, love.'
	'A love as such. A fuck and might just cut her daughter's hair.'
	'You watch the language.'
	'Babel's had enough?'
	'You know as well as I.'
	And Alice leaps out cool, gone cherry from her highspring. All the longwhile sprig of nap and clotted lock leap out their bedlay, sheep's down, naked arm, a youth wrapped tight and up.
	Mother takes her time with Reilly, dancing toe to toe, a breast'll scrape the naked arm, the bones beneath his finger's skin. She's dancing love, her daughter's near to fuming.
	'That's a three fifteen.'
	'And on the dot? They've always made it here for me.'
	'And out of pocket, daughter dearest.'
	'Yes. And you?'
	From out the darkness at the edge of room:
	'It's what he done. He made me sign it.'
	Klasglow snaps a ratted pack of dried up smokes along his naked palm, flatwhite buttress, ashen, bag of bones.
	'Says's teeth is crooked, leaping out, a mess of men before him all the same.'
	'He's made his way a little further through a throat.'
	'And more. His throat he said what needed something fed, a touch, a little dust, a dragherround in heaven, Daisied, sooted drawers, the collar's snap. Et cetera.'
	'The dirty leaf.'
	'The dryleaf.'
	'And his teeth made fast for home.'
	'Said as a stopplug in the throat of all around.'
	'Yet he is eaten.'
	'Just as you and I.'
	'And all he'd ever ask. Or I and I. The same, a lay between. A cauter in her ardor. Little Jezebel.'
	'The nightblue fruit. The virgin on her terrace.'
	'Oh, yes. The night. The Mother.'
	Clots in naddy dust lie still and lone there in the corners. The light out front grew dim and steady dark just midway through the naked space, the room's behind all clotted dust and heaps of ash in speckle, little curls of ancient hair braid there and through and through the dust to keep the hash and soot from rising. Not a broom has touched the space for time gone past and seldom if remembered. Men and women stroll on through the space by then but never grace the rear, it's dark and lone there, all the dust they say. A broom for sake of fuck or just a Hoover, god be damned. Just shuck the gathered up. The locks of ill-remembered in the gullet of the vac. They'd pray it so.
	The place is Georgie's, groping Main and wide there with its face, its windows girded round with columns, feigning Roman, Greek. The place had seen its touch before wide Georgie clamped the property. With iron jaws, a vulture. At his mark, he saw the place go down in flames the week before and knew just then what men will do to take away the cold abandon from another: men and force of mind, the cash, the cabbage, Georgie knew. He'd had his stars to guide him, said he did, he saw the fire. That it's only in the word of all if I've got this or other men. And word was real as flame, as soot, as ember. And the word would then and guide him as the stars, cold Luna in her bath. The terror in the husk, cold night in bridled linen. Pray it so.
	The dear might swing around, pay Eucharist to elder gods, to Mother on her perch. Sunday's massers squat along the alleys, aisles in their wake, the trundled gathered crawl from out the holy holies, keeping eyes on God or manna, out the holiest of holies, drink of life, a brittle wake and in her shelter, crawling out of deep. The market's stood on main would sup from all the reverent, taking cash in hand and feeding on the sensuous in worship, taking hand in hand and as a lover, take. And take would all the gathered.
	Georgie hired men to cut the hair of women. Lonely nights the lines would form in dual, triplicate, along the squab of Main.