The Dead Eat Everything

First Plague

8 F i r s t P L a g U e The autumn my baba built her house into a church, the floods rolled in like a cadillac, tinted and ominous, sloshing never-ending down the block as slow as a real-life disaster. an asp wrapped itself around her ankle. she stomped it hard, humming out of key like a great choreographer. That year, she’d seen a man break into the neighbor’s house with an axe. That year was the year after she started praying again, knelt before the bathtub gin. Seek Jesus nose-first with a blindfold, she said, palming the liquor to her face. Those were the hands she once used to prune the flowers, the flesh now loosened, the flourish now diminished. The floods worsened, like a pit bull chained for months then unchained. First, she dragged the bathtub to the living room, the claw-feet scarring a path through the house. Then, she stained the windows, 9 painting three of her favorite saints with large mouths and varicose veins. she sat at the organ in the corner. We filed in, water up to our knees. ...