Baba Yaga by Nick Lantz

"The sky was a broken window."

NICK LANTZ
Baba Yaga

For centuries I was small and gray as the peel
of a mouse. I sucked ice to stay warm, washed
my clothes in streams as cold as a tsar’s heart.
Imagine my surprise, then, at this swamp, so hot
the gutters burped roaches with every rain,
and storms swept down like pogroms.
When the whole neighborhood lost power,
I wrapped myself in the hurricane’s itchy wool
and walked to the local gas station mini mart.
I watched a fistfight break out over milk, a woman
weeping by her stalled car. They couldn’t see
the mud on their feet, but I had known that mud
for a thousand years. It never comes off. I walked
home. The sky was a broken window. That’s when
I found him, the baby, toddling in the roadside ditch,
a little toupee of mosquitos on his bald head.
I tucked him in my mouth for safekeeping. He didn’t
cry. Later, when I spit him out on my kitchen table,
he was asleep. I petted him with my mouse claws.
I tried to clean his feet, but the dirt wouldn’t
come off, so I dressed him in socks and an old shirt.
On the news, the king was cutting the ribbon
at the newest mass grave. That could be you someday,
‍I said to the baby, pinching his bug-bit cheek.
He looked up at me then, and grabbed my hand
so hard my finger broke. Was it love I felt?

★ Read our interview with Nick Lantz on the use of folklore in exploring the anxieties and absurdities of late-stage capitalism ★