No More Cake Here

The setting for “No More Cake Here” is a house, referred to intermittently by its parts. While ultimately, there are “ninety-nine of us” (Line 28) in the house, the speaker specifically identifies their brother, “Mom and Dad” (Line 10), and the “brothers and sisters” (Line 18) who are not the deceased. The “firemen” (Line 6), the “clowns” (Line 21), the “stray dogs” (Line 30), the “mariachi band” (Line 32), the “magician” (Line 33), and the “mutants” (Line 45) are not part of the family, but are there because of the party.

The house is the seat of all family activity, and contains all. The metaphorical balloons of trauma may rise, but the ceiling will keep them from floating away entirely. The house expands to accommodate its inhabitants, allowing everyone to be in the kitchen with a finger “in the mixing bowl” (Line 29). This is intimate space. If you’ve been let in, you’re family. The bathroom and hallways will always be crowded, and someone will slice you a piece of cake.

The wrapping of the electronics calls attention to the ordinary spectacle that occurs inside a home when someone affected by drugs plays out drug-induced obsessions within the home, “tak[ing] apart and put[ting] back together (Line 42) that which is readily available within the house. The brother is “a magician of sorts “ (Line 44), performing on the home stage.

The idea of the domestic and home takes an even darker turn with the mention of the cooking utensils in the brother’s “basement bedroom” (Line 48). His “horrible” (Line 55) cooking is not nutritious home cooking, even if its purpose is to satisfy a hunger. The basement, below ground, suggests a dark place separate from the rest of the house. This part of the house is not a gathering space, but a place of isolation, where the brother makes and consumes drugs.