(Livres DC Books).
When we carved and ate Andre
he was blue: all but his teeth, that shone
like whitecap Andes in the sun.
Maybe, as they later said, we were in error
to eat Andre. Take that first day: impromptu
games to keep us warm, a large-sky hope
to be found and flown out. Still, during
our rests from the game, we found ourselves eyeing
each other’s legs, wrapped with rags. We’d imagine
the golden swell of the calf,
curving like a downhill meadow that slants
to the sun. A week later, uncertainty
had turned to fear. At times the sky looked
close and homely, as we dined at six from familiar plates,
imagining other sensations, a million
miles away: the cold granulation
of an old friend on our tongues. He’d died
in the crash; within minutes, anyway, huddled
in a white-rimed blanket in the twisted
wreckage of the tail. This was the coldest
time, the days of Andean winter dwindling
to a sort of rose sputter
that passed for light. Soon we were too cold
to melt snow for drink. Our faces
swelled—I couldn’t talk. I lived
old games in my head, tackling the gaunt
wishbone of a runner’s legs. In the end, of course
they found us, sitting stiff and frozen
like missing dinner guests. I awoke
in a Lima hospital, dreaming I had been eaten
by the Andes. Churchmen sat on every spare bed,
sent to mention obliquely those who had not returned.
They measured our souls, even spirited away
our shit, to examine it for angels. Were we wrong
to eat Marc and Andre? I can consider that now
on a full belly. In the ungodly chill, heat leaking
from our bodies like rain from a rotten barrel,
we took the flesh they had left behind, it’s as simple
as that. Now we’re getting hellfire
from all sides: lean Methodists, fat Jesuits, all
worrying their heads over our meal of blue meat.
The light falls on us in beams and motes; the questions
are phrased to trick us. A local holy man
said that if Heaven were this cold, then god
would open his own veins for us. The Church can’t
freeze or starve. I think if all the priests sat on a sail-
white peak, roaring through raw blue sky, they’d tear
angels to pieces with their teeth, before they’d die