Editor’s note: This screed, scribbled in coarse ink on coarser paper, appeared in the secret drop-box of our hidden office in the SUB. Although loathesome to look upon, can we learn lessons from this unknown scribe? Will its vitriol overshadow its truths?

I was loathe, at first, to comment upon the campaign posters for the Presidential race. As a child, I was not allowed to look at photographs or mirrors; Father said they were “ikons of Beelzebub,” and that man only apishly mimicked what the Lord God alone was able to create. Being a free-thinking individual, I am more liberal in my views. Still, looking upon these images created a stirring in my bowels, a physical sense of wrong. Forgive me if my queasiness shows through my words.

The man Cappellacci

Here is a fellow who is familiar with his own visage, and finds it pleasing. The even dispersal of hair upon his cheek suggests to me an individual who has never worked a day’s honest labour in his life, has neither gutted the earth for riches nor felled the giants of the forest for fuel to warm his family. And yet, his face-bones are roughly hewn, too roughly, methinks, for those of an oily Mediterranean. Perhaps his father should enquire after the activities of the Pollack milk-man? But I digress.

I would not fain call any woman a hoor who, upon looking into Cappellacci’s eyes, found her loins whetted. Verily, these are the eyes of a man who retains a boy’s fresh senses, yet acts and speaks with the vigour of a man. I once saw such eyes on the face of a sailor who dwelt for a time above the gin-shop in Town. He was not long there before three milkmaids bore his whelps. If I recall, he left in the night, never to return. The children, all, were born disfigured. A sorry affair, and a warning to the softer sex: Guard your wombs ‘gainst the man Cappellacci.

The man Parson

It has been said that I harbour a weakness for pretty mouths, and a prettier mouth I have never seen than upon the man Parson. Those sculpted lips and that forgiving chin make the mouth of my own dear Maw-Maw seem like the foam-flecked meat-hole of a sottish charcoal burner. I do not say this lightly. During my years in the workhouse, a pretty mouth was a valued thing. A man might amass his own weight in tobacco or molasses if he possessed an orifice so fine as Parson’s and put it to worthy labour. O, but I do not wish such a sentence upon poor Parson. His shoulders are so slender, his skin birch-pale. The workhouse would break him like a cur beneath the wheels of the Foreman’s wagon.

Parson wears spectacles, which elicits my distrust. What use has a man for spectacles, lest he be in the employ of the Bank, mislaying the honest Worker’s salt and bread with his wily scrivening? Glasses are the acoutrement of a Clerk, and a Clerk’s word is not worth the soft white skin that holds him together.

And yet! That mouth. Had I not given my heart, in Dream-Time, to the Doe of the Mountain, I might offer it to that mouth, in vain hope that its soft succor be my companion until death. But alas, I am married to the Mountain, as surely as Parson is married to the bank-man’s ledger.

The woman Koehn

In my land, it is not custom for a woman to bare the contours of her calves or to pose for portraits. I must admit that I am shocked by how boldly this “AJ” gazes upon her viewers. She is like the Sweet and Holy Mother of Our Lord, but inversed, all meekness and God-fearing replaced by a fury and heat to rival that of any hand-logger with a brandy-filled gut. I pity any man who crosses this Child of Lilith. She is a woman who turns bulls to steers.

And, speaking of live-stock: It seems “AJ” has been sectioned and quartered like a fine young shoat! Here, a cartooned dart labels her locks “passionate.” Another points to her elbow, declaring that it “Creates high-functioning teams.” Also, her knee is a “Collaborative leader.” I might go further, but the jest would grow stale.

At first I felt that a candidate so divided would poorly serve her office. However, upon further reflection, it occurs to me that a leader who governs by her elbow, her hair, her knees, etc. has an advantage over her opponents.

The stuffed shirts who head Industry and Government tend to be great proponents of the Brain, that mass of tissue believed (perhaps correctly) by the Ancients to serve only as a cooler of the blood. The Brain, in my mind, is a highly sentimentalized organ. Does a man hew a cedar and construct a winter food-cache with his head? Does a woman suckle her child at a teat growing from her scalp?

It is the greater Body that serves the greater Good. If “AJ” would guide us with the innate talents of her Earthly frame, then so be it. Surely she outshines the “head-strong” milquetoasts Parson and Capelacci. Were I a voting man, I would know where to mark my “X”.

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This post was definitely not written by Bryce.