Warren-jfk-dallas
3 STORIES BY BILL HUTTON
Warren-JFK-Dallas
John Fitzgerald Kennedy shot John Wilkes Booth. Green blazer on white sand shock of hair eyes. Both have thirteen letters. He shot him in old Dallas moviehouse with urine smell and hats move wet-eyed on policemen's laps. He shot him in the heart and he shot his babies in the asses and he shot his brother-in-law and the niece and the sister's lover from Greece or Peru. He shot Princess Radziwill. John Fitzgerald Kennedy shot Lyndon Johnson who shot John Wilkes Booth, Jack Ruby and Kate Smith. He shot them on white Nantucket beach party a-Go-Go. He shot them with a Hyannisport fried clam gun. He shot them with cotillians. He shot them with DuPonts. He shot them with Peabody's and Saltenstalls. He shot them with the New York Yacht Club. He shot them with Provincetown. He shot them with Boston. He shot them with Choate and with Harvard and with charm dashing exquisiteness. He shot them with Pieere Salinger. He shot them with Bay of Pigs. He shot them with a martyred heart. He shot them with sleepness nights. He shot them with dead babies
and black veils and exploding prosperity.
Jack Ruby shot Dallas Long. Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. JFK shot John Wilkes Booth to heaven. He shot him with his nickel-plated brother. He shot him with a cardboard Senate. He shot him with Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey's drugstore cosmetic stare. He shot them with mountain climbing expeditions to Chili and runs down the Colorado River and trips to South America and Spain. He shot them with his French-speaking wife. He shot them with Utrillo and charming wit. He shot them with his fucking museum breath. John Kennedy shot John Wilkes Booth in the heart. Booth went to a farm bleeding. He ate a live cow. Kennedy found him and shot him with Kotex. He shot him in the Goddamn fucking empty American heart. He shot him with Arthur Schlesinger. He shot him with miracles and master plans. He shot him. He shot him with everything. Everything has thirteen or 36 or 89 letters. Kennedy, Booth, Oswald, Ruby and Lincoln are all dead.
3 STORIES by BILL HUTTON
Bill Hutton, one of the best contemporary short story writers, is at the present time held captive in the Pontiac State Hospital. He is the author of A STRANGE ODYSSEY OF HOWARD POW!, which was published in 1966 by the Artists' Workshop Press in Detroit in an edition of 1000. His second book, A HISTORY OF AMERICA, was published by the Coach House Press in Toronto. Both are out-of-print. We hope to find a publisher who will be interested in reprinting these books so they will be generally available and Bill Hutton will finally get the recognition he deserves.
Peach Melba Atomic Bastard Insane
Baby faces hundreds of them, all marching to the candy store in a crazy green whirl that defies imagination and logic.
"We want to vote," they shout -- ambassadors, world titular heads, Peace & War people. "No we don't want to vote! Then give us some of those licorice whips!"
The Roumanian delegation settles for Candy Green Leaves. The Mexicans of course order hot balls. On and on and on. The Americans ask for something the guy has never heard of even. Some crazy stuff that sounds like giodersvierel or something. Candy man's going out of his head, dropping the little white sacks and everything.
"We made these bags," say the Japanese.
"Pearl Harbor sneak attack," says an Egyptian, looking around the room for laughing faces and wet eyes.
"Peppermints!"
Peppermints remind a man from Austria of Christmas when he was a boy & wearing leather shorts and how in the morning they'd find peppermint candy by the base of the pine tree. The candy was red and white in the snow and cold& he remembers how he could look up from the pine tree to the mountains and how the clouds were always rolling by in the same direction, how he believed his dead grandpa was in those clouds...
This was the peace conference. All the nations were gathered to find
out what was wrong. There was much wrong everywhere and they were at the candy store to find out why everything was so wrong exactly and what was how and why. Or it could have been a hardware store or a bedroom or a bank or a sporting goods store.
"This candy tastes like a nihilistic dream," moans a Turk, a piece of white fudge in his mouth & crumbs on his lower lip no more.
Is it perhaps impossible? What's wrong? What's wrong? Let's work something out. Let's work something better out. Let's get simple and uncomplicated and personal and fall in love yes candy store delegates one and all remember how it was when we were children? No, that's silly.
"Marry Janes, Mary Janes," blabbers the Canadian, an audience at bay by the hard candy jars. "When I was a kid me and me brother allus use to hold up this little gas station down the hill from us. It was in the summer and we'd walk down the green hill with these hot overcoats on, see, and then we'd stick the guy up! But we were just pretending and he was nice and would put his arms over his head and say, 'Oh, don't shoot me, plea-ea-ease don't shoot me,' an then reach into the cupboard where the candy bars were and take out a couple packets of these Mary Janes!"
"On the Volga," says a Russian Red Russian, butter rum or something melting joyously in his hand, "On the Volga it's just like Yevtushenko says.
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Subjects
Freeing John Sinclair
Old News
Ann Arbor Sun