With apologies to Sonny Boy Williamson. The homebrew made me do it.
She’s my baby. Every time she knocks on wood, it opens, with a soft parting of cellulose.
Her smile doesn’t just light up the room; it can power all the household appliances for a month.
She’s better than a street sweeper, because wherever she walks soon gets a spit-shine from the scores of men rushing to kiss the ground.
She visited Lourdes once, & the abandoned crutches got up and walked away.
The last time she strolled past a cemetery, the dead didn’t stop at coming back to life — several of them danced on their own graves. They were that grateful.
She went to visit her congressman in Washington, & by the next morning, astonished headlines twice as solid as the last Presidential erection were precipitating a nationwide shortage in black ink: CONGRESS VOTES SELF PAY CUT, MAKES SUBSIDIES ILLEGAL.
You say your woman is fine, but mine can actually get you fined in dozens of municipalities where the transport or possession of my baby has been declared a threat to public health & decency.
Six hundred & sixty-six ordained ministers have denounced my baby from the pulpit. Jesus is still O.K. to worship — he’s safely off in heaven — but if this broken stink of a world were ever really healed, how could you tell the sinners from the saved? It’s a dilemma.
That’s why, for her birthday, I’m buying her the second-most expensive sunglasses on the rack — the kind with mirrored lenses.
Not prescription, mind you. Her eyesight is perfect.
This is fabulous.
Sonny Boy & his fellow Signifyers would be proud of you. An old custom revived.
Rachel – You’re too kind.
Dick – I’ve also been influenced by reading William Kloefkorn, who includes many a nod to the American tall tale tradition in his book Not Such a Bad Place to Be.
I would love a tribute like that. Wow.