he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents<\/p>\n
every morning. It was awful. Unforgivable. But they kept coming<\/p>\n
back for more. They loved him, was all they could say.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It started with him stumbling along la Avenida de los Muertos,<\/p>\n
my parents walking behind like effigies in a procession<\/p>\n
he might burn to the ground at any moment. They didn’t know<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
what else to do except be there to pick him up when he died.<\/p>\n
They forgot who was dying, who was already dead. My brother<\/p>\n
quit wearing shirts when a carnival of dirty-breasted women<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
made him their leader, following him up and down the stairs\u2014<\/p>\n
They were acrobats, moving, twitching like snakes\u2014They fed him<\/p>\n
crushed diamonds and fire. He gobbled the gifts. My parents<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
begged him to pluck their eyes out. He thought he was<\/p>\n
Huitzilopchtli, a god, half-man, half-hummingbird. My parents<\/p>\n
at his feet, wrecked honeysuckles, he lowered his sword-like mouth,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
gorged on them, draining color until their eyebrows whitened.<\/p>\n
My brother shattered and quartered them before his basement festivals\u2014<\/p>\n
waved their shaking hearts in his fists,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
while flea-ridden dogs ran up and down the steps, licking their asses,<\/p>\n
turning tricks. Neighbors were amazed my parents’ hearts kept<\/p>\n
growing back\u2014It said a lot about my parents, or parents’ hearts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My brother flung them into cenotes, dropped them from cliffs,<\/p>\n
punched holes into their skulls like useless jars or vases,<\/p>\n
broke them to pieces and fed them to gods ruling<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
the ratty crotches of street fair whores with pocked faces<\/p>\n
spreading their thighs in flophouses with no electricity.He slept<\/p>\n
in filthy clothes smelling of rotten peaches and matches, fell in love<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
with sparkling spoonfuls the carnival dog-women fed him. My parents<\/p>\n
lost their appetites for food, for sons. Like all bad kings, my brother<\/p>\n
wore a crown, a green baseball cap turned backwards<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
with a Mexican flag embroidered on it. When he wore it<\/p>\n
in the front yard, which he treated like his personal z\u00f3calo,<\/p>\n
all his realm knew he had the power that day, had all the jewels<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
a king could eat or smoke or shoot. The slave girls came<\/p>\n
to the fence and ate out of his hands. He fed them ma\u00edz<\/p>\n
through the chain links. My parents watched from the window,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
crying over their house turned zoo, their son who was<\/p>\n
now a rusted cage. The Aztec held court in a salt cedar grove<\/p>\n
across the street where peacocks lived. My parents crossed fingers<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
so he’d never come back, lit novena candles<\/p>\n
so he would. He always came home with turquoise and jade<\/p>\n
feathers and stinking of peacock shit. My parents gathered<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
what he’d left of their bodies, trying to stand without legs,<\/p>\n
trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers<\/p>\n
to pray, to climb out of whatever dark belly my brother, the Aztec,<\/p>\n
their son, had fed them to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading Natalie Diaz, “When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012) (Version 2.0)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"class_list":["post-44","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/english495\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}