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by Greg Mulcahy

Baudelaire was telling a story about some one or some thing called “Bobby Cigarette.”

No one has a name like that, he said.

Baudelaire seemed sad.

The whale, Baudelaire said, was Ahab.

Kind of kills the conflict, he said.

Whale like Baleine, he thought, but Baudelaire might have said something else.

How did they get from Bobby Cigarette to this?

Whale. So it was a mammal. So was he. So was Baudelaire.

The banner celebrated the prison service industry.

Body and soul and isolation and insanity like characters in a show.

He was taught life was a series of grinding, meaningless tasks unaligned with each other.

Baudelaire was saying something about life as a sexual carnival.

Carnival?

Well, there was the banner.