Lea Galanter

Alphabet soup

anemic as he was the
boardman confronted the blue-haired
crank who pranced into the room with a
dare-devil look in his eye screaming that his
eave was about to fall into his
fig tree and that and he had just started to
gather all the fruit but the
heather laughed at him and it was
inarguable that he deserved their derision because they
judged him every year on the quality of the
kickshaws he made, which he would
layer up on the roof — it was
magic how he got them all up there
next to the eaves, which was an
odd place for anyone to put dishes but the
police officers wanted the food for themselves in
quadruple, and the boardman just wanted to go over the
rainbow, like Dorothy, but instead he just got
stung by the bees, who also wanted the
tegmen of the food, and it didn’t matter if he put an
umbrella over it or not, they questioned the
veracity of his words and all he ever got for himself was
white rice filled with this horrible, stinking
xanthan gum, and he much preferred to have egg
yolk than that, and for this they called him a
zealot — can you believe it?