Joshua Cohen - Witz

Imagination surely helpseth.

Be creative.

Though be sure to causeth as little damage as possible to the flesh. Be sure to causeth her not much pain.

Note: Drowning imparts a wetness that is undesirable, resulting in a toughness of the flesh (unless she is drownedeth in a brining, or curing, solution. See PICKLED MOTHER).

If you can’t bringeth yourself to kill your own mother, then have another do it, preferably her husband, if your father, or any other immediate relation to the woman (one’s siblings are suggested: remember, however, that money must not changeth hands).

Just prior to the onset of rigor mortis, deeply rubbeth her with salt, then anoint with the oil: anointment should taketh place twentyfour (24) hours prior to serving, during which time Mother should be kepteth at room temperature; then, placeth gently, do not force, the three onions, one each into her mouth, vagina, and the orifice that she calls her “tuchus.”

Placeth in a house of an oven, preheatedeth to 325° F.

Baketh until sunset, or golden.

There is no substitute.

There is nothing.

During baking, anointeth Mother often in her own juices with baster, mop, or favorite sweeping broom.

You might want to consult the maid (you might wanteth a maid).

Carveth, and enjoy (consulteth our chapter on Anatomy, if need be).

Useth teeth and shorn hair for garnish.

Eyes maketh for a most special delicacy.

Do not watch water.

Do not hope.

Note: An interesting flavor may be attained by bakingeth Mother alongside, or underneath — dependingeth on oven capacity — your father, her husband, or grandparents (his or her parents).

Also note, however, that the flavor of Mother will be significantly lessenedeth the further removed the relation.

Remember that blood must mixeth with its own.

Remember, zachor.

Though never under any circumstances of denial, anger, bargaining, anything whatsoever depressant, attempt this recipe on yourself.

Unless.

Leftovers keepeth well.

Mother is delicious upon the Sabbath, and within the week’s intermediary days — but will always become spoiled before the conclusion of the following Shabbos.

Upon Mondays freezeth, and upon Thursdays thaweth her out, then keep her refrigerated.

To avoideth spoilage, wrap Mother well in both her dresses of maternity, and of wedding.

Do not leaveth her uncovered.

Not ever.

Serveth with sacramental wine.

Let the bottle chilleth between your thighs overnight.

A moon lights full above them, and winter.

While the Kabbalists among us hold that everything in this world is as a mirror of the Other, the next and its everything, which is then not entirely everything — discuss…what’s perplexing (Perplexity being the only named universe, able to accommodate both the Kabbalists and Him) is which is the reflection and which the reflected. Or else, how both are of reflected and reflections beyond.

This, we’ve drunk before.

Our cosmology needs only to ripen a moment — then, all will be done. Finished, kaput.

All this time they’ve been waiting outside, just outside the door.

His house, yours, mine.

New guests, old late. It’s so deeply winter, so lately winter, and yet latening still, it might as well be spring, let’s agree. They’re waiting out in that freezing sheet of fall, sheets, fitted sleet and flattening hail, them the great Huddled, shivering sleepless in a week’s worth of tattered up against the fattily marbled frontsteps: some lean, others squat, leansquat fall lie amid the puddles of stock the weather’s inflicted, infected, cloudorgans, nimbusglands…their kinder, so wellbehaved, even courteous, all would you be so kind as tos and thankyous, can you please pass and I appreciate it in the past they’re fighting again, incorrigible gangs of meat kinder vs. milk kinder they’re rolling a tumble in tantrums of sauce, spatterings, tussle’s splatter, angryred, rage-gravy, sickly slick mixings unstrained, unholy dressings and impure preparations, small heads going uncapped gone uncorked in the chaos, brandnamed I forget, or whether generic, their spilled paste on the sidewalk, a waste, and them, too: they’ve been waiting, waiting, too long they’ve been waiting forever — their salttears, their breadcrumb whining, their pounding on and knockerkneading of doors that open to be only fudged shadows, toffeemocha delight, with their fists raw, their fingernails scratched down to sliced through if not merely nicked flesh upon panes of air whipped up in whirrs of sky’s mixer, air’s whisk…it’s a superflumina out there, and appetizingly enormous, they’re pushing and shoving, forking to knife, tumultuous; all having begun politely enough last Shabbos this’ll end, if ever, if any of them remember to set their timers, which are their tickytock hearts, in limbs pulled from sockets, noodlestretched, dismembered strewn in shallow stinging pools of lemonjuice and lime, citric stagnant at gratings clogged, a flow sewerseeking, the lowest ground amidst such layercaked, panbrowned waste, these remnants sprinkled atop heaps of stems, these spit pits, and seeds, the compost cholent, the sewage let sit. The hot spice of dessert tea scented with excrement, sugary urine. Ones nearest the door, the door the front one scratchedup, tore at desperately, its window fogged to strudelthin dough, were an eternity last week ago trampled to death, then buried under stuffings of humus, heaped far off at the edge of the lawn, at the neighbors’ fence of snakes, posts from whose mouths hang singleservings of signs, the spleening of liver…Keep Out. Private prop. Violators will be, and will always. Out that far at half-&-half, the halved again flow of laneless road — entire families dock at sidewalk to disembark meaty junks, pareved barges they’re hollowedout, scooped from steerage from huge ships of melon unripe and sweet, destined, themselves, for here’s lost Friday, this last Sabbath of Shabbos, all with their own recipes, all of their own recipes, their own ways of doing things by which everything and everyone else is heretically wrong — waiting to prepare, for only the preparation of waiting. Time. They approach, drag themselves dribbling froth along the marzipanly edged path of lawn laid with macaroon slates they arrive at the stoop, step as ingredients supererogatory if inedible, too, to the door. And then the porchlight, a bulbed berry, flicks on in its drupes, and they turn their plated faces Heavenward, awed.

Their appetite’s for in, though — a taste for in only.

A bundled bunch of menschs tight in their suits as if kishka, stuffed derma, threepiece intestinal, they drip the gravying fobs from their cavities, stir the clocks.

Mothers, washing faces of suet and grease, sit sucking the schnapps out of the ears of their kinder.

One innocent son aged much over the interminable last week, stands. Moon laid the egg hatched to darkness, the black of a starless burn.

Then, lightning flashes flank’s vein, illuminates the house: the standing invitation threefloored, forever ripening, its siding all peel and rind stuck together as if with the mortar of honey, too sweet…

Led by this son the perpetually Late muster one last squash altogether: this mass snapping, a thunderous husking, a shelling, the lamblike twisting of necks (there’s a fierce churn from the back, the sidewalk, from the edges of the lawn they fold themselves in, away from the serpented fence, its sticks hissing up at them in the stirring wind, writhing free of their plant to slither at them dumbly, snaking themselves deep into the fruit of fallen apples, getting themselves stuck there, snakes with apples for heads, apples where their heads should be, tongueless, harmless, without fang; without any senses save their slick green lengths, they hiss their slither over one another insensate, collide stupidly, crash their heads of apples up against one another until rodents assemble to rat away at the appled heads, nibble, gnaw, down to the cores, coring down to the dead and the slithering stops, the snakes stiffen again to sticks, to cinnamonbark, utensils without use)…piecemeal poultry, baked breaded chickens peck at one another, pluck each missing which quarter, a drumstick, a wing here, there a thigh — a flightless haunch, schnitzel; menschs chasing the boiled eggs they drop in tripping falls of pigeontoes (oy, so the squish of seasoned squabs); above, gefilte rolled together gefülte out of thousands of their forefishes since smoked out of existence, how they swim along on a stream of fleischig borscht (dairy gust blowing, too, uncleanly coming from the opposite quarter in cream both soured and sweet), slices of candied carrots over their eyes then one set atop each as if a yarmulke, parsley payos, in their wake wisped a fringe with dollops of horseradish cut through with the richness of beets. Gigantic beans droop from their stalks, dripping their sauté of garlic, oil, a pinch me now of overexcitement to overseason the already marinated earth, cooling below. Raisinrocks. Nuts of stone. Glaze of a soil never to shmita. Bound sheaves of noodle propped against the siding skin of the threecar garage. Orphaned opossums, widowed raccoons, lonely squirrels recently unbound from neighboring nutshells if only to face the indignity of lawn and illimitable rangespace, forage in the tenth of scraps set aside for them or mourning. Assembled hold to the windows as if they’re servingtrays silvered by lightning’s knife, then tilt them to reflect into heat what gleam might survive…the screens of summer ripping this spring, the thrum of their mesh in the wind the throating of thunder: bend them into bowls, to collect through their sieve the precipitate wine — the pitpat of sacred Manischewitz, mixed impure with a melt of snow milchig, saltwater teared; this dilute flows down the street, into the looparound, a curbbound reservoir of chilling blush rendered filthy with stirs of wrapper, packaging, shells and yolks, globbed atop with the anoint of oil both vegetable and unhealthily not; (dietetic) seltzer shpritzes up from the scandal of potholes, unpruned danish-pits, bagelvoids of pumpernickel, of everything and nothing, indistinguishable…gutters run with the blood of cows, overflowing the sidewalk, hunks of dark chocolate, tufts of licorice sprouting through cracks. Moustaches stain a sweep across, they baste, an attentive beardmopping: they’re kissing in as much as they’re able to swallow, it’s fine by us, we won’t tell, any combination, just needs something more, just a touch, a pinch butter or milk or another nonkashered…who’s going to whisper the recipe, the ingredient secret? Indulge, more like divulge. This is holy ground, holied. As much as anywhere, lately. And unburnable, too. Anything’s permissible here, if here — all under the strictest Development supervision, which is the mandate of gluttony usurping yesterday’s underdone glatt…