The Purity Instinct Joanne Diaz (bio) Keywords poetry, Joanne Diaz Near the end, Ceausescu would only drink juice through a straw.Twice, he was convinced that his hearing had improved: oncewhen he heard the sound of a distant train of his youth;another time when his long-dead mother sang a little-known songin his ear. Other times—orange was especially good for this—he felt his bones straighten, and once, after a tall glassof grapefruit, his arms acquired the strong sinews of his timeas the village shepherd and shoemaker. With prune,his skin became impervious to cold. At a foreign banquetheld in his honor, he went to the balcony, stood in the rainlike a dog, and did not shiver once. On the road, his assistantkept all the straws in a satchel; at home, every drawer was full.On the first of each month, a crate went directly to the kitchenbuilt with the blood of traitors and money from the West.After a childhood of pig fat and sheep's milk, the purity instinctwas strong for Ceausescu. In those final moments, as he sang"The Internationale," his hands cuffed to his wife's, he must have admiredhow clean bullet in its chamber, the singular force of its straight line. Note: This poem is inspired by the Dinner Party podcast "Studying the Food of History's Most Infamous." [End Page 677] Joanne Diaz joanne diaz received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is the author of My Favorite Tyrants and The Lessons, and with Ian Morris, she is the coeditor of The Little Magazine in Contemporary America. She is an associate professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. Copyright © 2017 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.