IJ study archive

The Madame Psychosis show — "Those with saddle-noses. Those with atrophic…"

quote

‘Those with saddle-noses. Those with atrophic limbs. And yes chemists and pure-math majors also those with atrophic necks. Scleredema adultorum. Them that seep, the serodermatotic. Come one come all, this circular says. The hydrocephalic. The tabescent and chachetic and anorexic. The Brag’s-Diseased, in their heavy red rinds of flesh. The dermally wine-stained or carbuncular or steatocryptotic or God forbid all three. Marin-Amat Syndrome, you say? Come on down. The psoriatic. The exzematically shunned. And the scrofulodermic. Bell-shaped steatopygiacs, in your special slacks. Afflictees of Pityriasis Rosea. It says here Come all ye hateful. Blessed are the poor in body, for they.’

Context

The litany at full recruiting pitch: carny barker ("Come on down") fused with Beatitude, and the Beatitude broken off before its promise — "Blessed are the poor in body, for they." No predicate. The circular works by exhaustiveness: every body the species can produce, called by name and called in. (Spellings "chachetic," "exzematically," "Brag's-Diseased" as written.)

In anthology