Issue #96

We Were Hungry Enough to Eat a Horse

by Nicole Brogdon

After the war, our bellies growled like small bears as we trudged many miles down the busy dirt road, passing ducks, geese, one-legged one-eyed men, bald women, and a monkey with a tambourine. A fireball blew through, blackening the field on our right. A tap-dancing horse trotted towards us carrying a bucket in its mouth, collecting shillings for rides and soft shoe routines. We quickly debated—transportation, entertainment, or food? Clop clop camaraderie or horse meat? But the road was long, our lives were short, our stomachs, empty. So we threw our skeletal bodies upon the nag, unable to wait for a knife or a fire, munching and moaning. Chewing through her hide, leaving her four hooves like speed bumps behind us.

We kept moving, unclear where, traveling on leathery feet, then stealing shoes off the dead, passing bands of hairy others who snarled, rattled sticks, and beat bare pots like drums. Some of us sold our kidneys leaving scars like smiles beneath threadbare shirts. Fathers sold thin children for plump turnips, babies whisked away in swaddling like crying loaves of bread. A white cow was hawking her own milk, little calf following behind and muddying the road with her blue tears, so we stole a bucket of milk off her, keeping the bucket.

We swallowed our pride, we swallowed weeds, rabbits, insects, and a ball of twine, we swallowed stones for dumplings in our soup. We ate our hands, we traded our remaining organs one by one for grains of rice from villagers. Suddenly, a red-winged angel—no, a rare plump chicken—landed, tottering on thin claws, too tired to fight, ripe for the plucking. We devoured the hen, feathers and all, our bellies rising like balloons, tambourines clanging. We snorted like pigs, we stamped our cloven hooves, so happy for fresh meat, that we'd have clapped, if we had hands.