When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz

When My Brother Was an Aztec

    he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents
    every morning. It was awful. Unforgivable. But they kept coming
    back for more. They loved him, was all they could say.

    It started with him stumbling along
la Avenida de los Muertos,
    my parents walking behind like effigies in a procession
    he might burn to the ground at any moment. They didn’t know

    what else to do except be there to pick him up when he died.
    They forgot who was dying, who was already dead. My brother
    quit wearing shirts when a carnival of dirty-breasted women

    made him their leader, following him up and down the stairs—
    They were acrobats, moving, twitching like snakes— They fed him
    crushed diamonds and fire. He gobbled the gifts. My parents

    begged him to pluck their eyes out. He thought he was
    Huitzilopochtli,
a god, half-man half-hummingbird. My parents
    at his feet, wrecked honeysuckles, he lowered his swordlike mouth,

    gorged on them, draining color until their eyebrows whitened.
    My brother shattered and quartered them before his basement festivals—
    waved their shaking hearts in his fists,

    while flea-ridden dogs ran up and down the steps, licking their asses,
    turning tricks. Neighbors were amazed my parents’ hearts kept
    growing back—It said a lot about my parents, or parents’ hearts.

    My brother flung them into
cenotes,
dropped them from cliffs,
    punched holes into their skulls like useless jars or vases,
    broke them to pieces and fed them to gods ruling

    the ratty crotches of street fair whores with pocked faces
    spreading their thighs in flophouses with no electricity. He slept
    in filthy clothes smelling of rotten peaches and matches, fell in love

    with sparkling spoonfuls the carnival dog-women fed him. My parents
    lost their appetites for food, for sons. Like all bad kings, my brother
    wore a crown, a green baseball cap turned backwards

    with a Mexican flag embroidered on it. When he wore it
    in the front yard, which he treated like his personal
zócalo,
    all his realm knew he had the power that day, had all the jewels

    a king could eat or smoke or shoot. The slave girls came
    to the fence and ate out of his hands. He fed them
maíz
    through the chain links. My parents watched from the window,

    crying over their house turned zoo, their son who was
    now a rusted cage. The Aztec held court in a salt cedar grove
    across the street where peacocks lived. My parents crossed fingers

    so he’d never come back, lit
novena
candles
    so he would. He always came home with turquoise and jade
    feathers and stinking of peacock shit. My parents gathered

    what he’d left of their bodies, trying to stand without legs,
    trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers
    to pray, to climb out of whatever dark belly my brother, the Aztec,
    their son, had fed them to.

I

Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation

    Angels don’t come to the reservation.
    Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
    Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing—
    death. And death
    eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel
    fly through this valley ever.
    Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though—
    he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical
    Indian. Sure he had wings,
    jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops,
    kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies.
    Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.
    Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something—
    Nazarene church holds one every December,
    organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder
    Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white.
    Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians.
    Remember what happened last time
    some white god came floating across the ocean?
    Truth is,