Did Donald Barthelme ever read Prufrock? Let me answer for you…

Barthelme - 60 Stories

But it is you I want now, here in the middle of this Uprising, with the streets yellow and threatening, short, ugly lances with fur at the throat and inexplicable shell money lying in the grass…There was a sort of muck running in the gutters, yellowish, filthy stream suggesting excrement, or nervousness, a city that does not know what it has done to deserve baldness, errors, infidelity.

Prufrock

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

Oh, I don't know...

Fur - muzzle
Throat - tongue
lying in the grass - let fall upon its back
filthy stream suggesting excrement - the soot that falls from chimneys
Nervousness - made a sudden leap
Yellow - yellow