Written by ANAXIFORMINGES
I wake at sunrise to the sound of squealing pigs; outside, an idiot child is eating pig shit and rat meat in a dish of black decaying rice. Next door, a virgin is being washed in a huge zinc tub; she is being cleansed for a political sacrifice of dubious worth. Tonight, her loins and buttocks will be served in rich sauces at the Imperial Table. I do not know what they will do with the rest of her, except that she’ll disappear forever with the rest of the sacrifices—
But before then, I too will fall into a trance, intoxicated with the dinner conversation of Aristotelian logic and Middle Eastern affairs.
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Louis Bourgeois is the Executive Director of the Mississippi non-profit arts coalition, VOX PRESS, and is the Director of the Mississippi Prison Writes Institute, a literacy agency that serves incarcerated writers and artists. He is primarily a poet, but he has published translations, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and interviews in over 300 magazines and journals and is the author of the National Book Award nominated, The Gar Diaries, and the award-winning collection of poems, OLGA. He graduated from Louisiana State University with a BA in English and was the first graduate of The University of Mississippi’s MFA program in Creative Writing.