While smoking a Marlboro Red, Tita tells me how good
mangosteen is for the body, how rich in antioxidants.
I send her the meme of a cat inside a jackfruit, and she responds
with a reel from a very 80’s strip club called “Cheeks.”
All white men with mustaches. Sometimes I think about I / we.
American fathers as young, hot men with mustaches.
How to stay soft? Is this the wrong question?
I pretend not to know what happened to Lola’s pigs
behind the house near the slop sinks. Did I tell you
the pig story? Lola tried raising them in America. She couldn’t
make a profit, so one summer we ate all the pigs ourselves.
On her 90th birthday, before guests arrived, Lola stuck
her hand into the lechon’s head and ate the crispy fat
while smiling ambiently. She thought to no one, No one is looking,
and there, her jackfruit tree in the family courtyard. Huge
grenades of fruit. Each the weight of a large dog
or small child. Enough to kill a man. We took turns at the spit.
She said I was cooked before the pig; red and salty and puffed
like chicharron. God I loved every one of those pigs we ate.