“On William Butler Yeats”, by Sean Raune

Aug 20th, 2008 | By | Category: Prose

1. Yeats walks into a room backwards and turns slowly.

2. Yeats likes the suspense of the thing.

3. Upon turning, Yeats will say, “Hi, fuckers!” and you will wave. You always wave.

4. Yeats, upon doing it with a woman for the first time, insists that she thereafter call him “Butters”.

5. At various intervals throughout the day Yeats smells like peaches, tarragon, and/or a pre-Suez canal era clipper ship.

6. A woman once yelled at Butters for leaving the seat up.

7. Yeats ripped the toilet seat from its hinges and resurrected the old Victorian pastime of throwing toilet seats at whores.

8. If you remove Yeats’ suit you will find an identical suit underneath, a slightly sweatier suit, the original suit he was wearing to the haberdashers before he stole the suit that you just took off of him.

9. Yeats will tell you that you look pretty. He will say it with words that leave his face like sunbeams. Your stomach will feel warm.

10. If you put on Yeats’ suit, the one you removed, you shouldn’t expect much, but you can gaurantee that there will be jaw-breakers in his pockets.

11. Yeats blows Yeats-sized bubbles and steps inside them and then goes swimming; fish approach and get stuck on the Yeats bubble. Fish for dinner, fuckers.

12. Yeats kicked a vicar in the balls on a Sunday after church in County Mayo after a dram and a dream and a smile.

13. Yeats’ penis has an elbow, but don’t worry about it.

14. Yeats likes creamed corn. If you are in the cafeteria and you are eating creamed corn and Yeats sees you, then Yeats will pull up along side you and take your creamed corn and then eat it.

15. Don’t still be sitting there when he’s finished.

16. Yeats has 2n+1 nipples. His internist refers to them as egregious.

17. Yeats sometimes gets heat rash from wearing a lot of suits. Sometimes a real nice nest of pimples visits…

18. There is some dry ejaculate on Yeats’ cuff that is more eloquent and articulate than you are. But he is Yeats.

19. It is kinda like your arm’s elbow only smoother, Yeats’ penis elbow.

20. Yeats got your grammy hooked on meth and jazz.

21. Now your grammy invites jazz greats to all her cookouts. Yeats flips burgers, man. Yeats flips good burgers; the supple wrist of the poet.

22. Your grammy asked Yeats did he know Ricardo “Three Dicks” Peters, the zoot trombonist from down Piedmont way.

23. Yeats replied, ‘Sure as shit; he is two dicks better than Pussy “Christopher” Waller on the plug accolade and flips mad twitter on the cupped zoot.”

24. What?

25. Your grammy nodded and Yeats flipped her a burger and then your grammy threw punches at Fat Gus “Broke William” Tomasino who knocked her on her ass.

26. You should have seen the look Yeats gave Fat Gus.

27. Yeats has the stigmata and it bleeds sunshine and makes your sheets gleam like butter. You remember him smelling of muffins and clipper ship. Oh, the buttery sheen of Yeats!

28. Yeats has a beard but it only appears in photographs; this discomfits private investigators and angry husbands.

29. That warmth in your belly? Yeats. You can call him “Butters” now.

30. Yes.

31. The windshear from Yeats’ profligacy will beat down the walls of your tenement sand castle, that place where your chastity hides.

32. Your grammy has shown up at the jazz club where Yeats tends bar, tweaked out of her panties on meth.

33. Yeats tells her to take a flying shit at a rolling toilet.

34. He sees you waving from your car. You’re just there dropping off your grammy. Other people are dropping off their grammies as well. Some are black grammies; Do you see the Navajo grammy?

35. Yeats is watching you, mouthing words you can’t hear or understand; he waves back.

36. Hi fucker!

37. “Pimples, pimples, balls, balls,” shouts your grammy. Other shouts are drowned out by what Fat Gus “Broke William” Tomasino, the undisputed King of West Coast Jazz, is ejaculating into the air.

38. You drive away and a jazz club gets real small.

39. You hear trumpet.

40. A sweet sound whose echoes make a patchwork of manic intention.

____________________

Sean Ruane has been published or has work forthcoming in Thieves Jargon, Storyglossia, Eyeshot, Sien Und Werden, 3 A.M Magazine, Elimae (as Julio Froberg) and other places. He writes shit in a grad program at Johns Hopkins University.

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