Loco Afán (Crazy Desire)

Photograph by Leonora Calderón

from The Night of the Minks (La Unidad Popular’s Last Fiesta)

…The first sunrise of ‘73 was a faded chiffon draped over the open mouths of the colizas sleeping sprawled across la Palma’s house. Cigarette ashes everywhere, below the trellis, trampled garlands. Soft groaning and strings of words came from the disheveled beds. Glasses, half-full, swayed with the rhythm of lovemaking, quiet giggling recalled the stolen minks. And that gap of light entering through the windows, that light floating like smoke through the wide-open door. As if the house were a skull illuminated from outside. As if las locas slept soundly in a five-skull hotel. As if the bone house erected in the center of the table were an altar to the coming future, an omen, the New Year horoscope winking black tears in the wax of the candles, at the point of snuffing out, the point of extinguishing the last spark lighting up the little paper flag crowning the shrine…