Author: Luisa A. Igloria

And afterwards? Didn’t the air carry a burnt sugar and cinnamon smell, even as the cinders stopped falling? You came out relatively unscathed, dammit. Which is more than can be said for others like you. Did you stop to give a thought about whose bones lay about in the cage or under the table where you crouched, where they thought you could be kept until you burst out of your skin from boredom or angst or misery, or all of the above? The hunger hasn’t gone away, has it? I’m not talking about cheap fashion made in China or Bangladesh, or shiny new electronics. The witch always wants what makes the music. Not the heart but the fire in the belly. Let me tell you about the rivers that rose beyond their jelly-colored banks to drown everyone in the sleeping town. Sweet children at the breast. Grandmothers in their hammocks. Under the sheets, fathers’ gnarly hands reaching for something softer than the handle of a hammer or the back of a plane. Watch that cardinal in the bush, sitting nearly motionless for a good ten minutes now. Even in that thimbleful of time, the instinct to take panicked flight is stilled: bright firecracker, urgent red of its triangle cap like a post-it note on a branch— You could read it from a mile away. And when it flies off, give thanks because you can.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d…”
— “The Merchant of Venice”,  Shakespeare

Before snow blew sideways, scattering
crystalline fragments, we held up metal

wires dipped in magnesium, ferrotitanium.
Held to a match, rich white and golden yellow

sparks branched off into the dark. Don’t lend
out any money today, the feast of Niños

Inocentes. Or if you do, don’t count
on getting any of it back. For a second,

think back to the story of soldiers scouring
the countryside for infant boys to slaughter

in their sleep. There is a difference between
naivete and the purely diabolical. Insist

on the former as an undeveloped state
that might yet lead to grace. The deer

might come to lick at lumps of packed
salt you’ve placed at the far end of

the garden. When they do, sit still, just
watch them. I know it’s hard, but hold

your face up to the fading light, mouth
rehearsing the ancient shapes of wonder.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What’s that burning smell, that rattling like sleet on the roof of the garden shed? Or is it the woman tumbled into the oven, flailing her arms against sleeves of darkening crust? Why is it her and not the woodcutter, the paterfamilias whose task it is, supposedly, to raise healthy children as future citizens, maintain the moral propriety and well-being of his household, honor his clan and ancestral gods? Pass the salt, skip the pepper. There’s nothing but sausage casing in the house to eat. It’s the membrane that wraps the minced ground pork or veal, that makes a farce, a shape that holds in the fire though all are torn from their origins. Pass the paprika, pass the pickling lime. What do they know? Who do you really think tried to hold it together, made paste out of boiled rice and water? Who read to them of stone soup and fed them stories to make the scraps seem sweeter? The law can punish for even the intent to abandon. But whose is the burden of proof? The bony finger that swims in the poorest gruel is the same one that polishes the moon, that hangs its dollar store corpse from the trees. Someone has confused the spelling of “desert” for a house of confectionery located in the woods. This is where they left us, or left us for dead. This is where they wanted us fed, then eaten alive. Well, I’ve got news for you, daddy-o. It’s your days that are numbered. I’ve found a bitch’s stash of balisongs and Ka-Bars that cut through both the softest bread and the hardest glass. Eat your last sweetmeat, kiss your dumpling wife and child. Not bothering with the cork, I’ll lop off the top of a bottle of champagne. It’s customary to offer a toast, a roast, on the eve of the new year.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.