During my last Havana summer,

an epidemic broke out all over the island,

some German virus that started

first in pigs, then infected humans

in those nether regions--who knew

if they existed, where animals subsisted

with humans. No one knew if the rumor

of such a decease was true. But one

day the Russian-build army trucks

arrived, the gravel crunched under

such weight through our neighborhood,

the armed soldiers spilled out canvas-

tarped backs like grain from a sack,

and the bulldozers came and dug

huge pits at the corner clearing

where people threw trash, left

brujeria-sacrificed animals, then while

more pits were being dug, the soldiers

marched down the streets, house

by house, confiscated all the animals

in people's patios and yards, one by one,

especially the pigs which squealed

like it was the end of the world, and it was.

They came and took our six-month piglet.

Our Christmas food. Our rabbits, chickens,

even the pet turtle in the cement sink.

All the animals herded toward the corner,

in Noah's Ark fashion, to the edge

of the pit where they stopped and fought

back the precipice. Men with blowtorches

set them afire, shot the larger animals

like horses and cows and pigs, torched

the smaller ones, chicken and duck

feathers burned in mid air. We gathered

at the corner, too afraid of perhaps being

next. We children stood by our parents

and watched as the animals fell, carcasses

charred and burnt to cinders, charred dominos

atop each other. The fires burned for a couple

of days and for weeks later, flecks of ashes fell

over everything, the smell of flesh, offal,

and hide thick in the air. Even now, from

the distance of thirty years, I can hear the pop

and sizzle of fur burning, the talk of fire, how

everything was taken away, except

for this burning that lingers in the mind,

some torch of resentment, blackness

of remembrance that refuses to be doused.