The Year of the Pig

Can you just tell me which crimes

are deep enough for us to build a shrine

around it in our memories

can we still dance inside a carbonized lung

and a drunken scar.

We’re poisoning the roads

and there’s red lipstick around my lack

of perception.

What is this year’s animal

we could just eat a barbecue instead

make the pig go away with poetry

why is it dragging itself

to my menstruated voice

is this just the air

or am I breathing smoked flesh?

Somebody told me I should enjoy

the bacon between stanzas.

Somehow, the pig is growing

replacing the inner child

now I have the inner pig

the ayi paiting my nails is asking

“what is the year in your country”

“你们怎么算”

I guess time can be part of sovereign power

supreme authority coming from the moon’s

rotation

just like my menstrual cycle

always messing up with the ocean of nights

that burst into mutual understanding

we all speak the same language anyway

but I guess the silences also require translation

I ask you 

*quais são os crimes que nos permitem construir um templo dentro do coração* 

that’s cultural adaptation, 

if you don’t understand I’ll bring some ham

we have a feast

I’ll throw in some validation

no dumplings inside the eternity of a memory

because we have enough meat

and you bring the queen’s blood in your shirt,

how fashionable of you.

No crimes are deep enough for us 

to build a shrine around it yet. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IN CELL LIKE YOU

I am not lovable. I never was. I fuck. I clean. I cook. I listen. I hold. I give birth. Hope, when we fuck, is the lie my body tells me before my mind catches up. During their sobbing, I am a therapist. During their hunger, I am a mother. I am everything. I am nothing. They fuck me. They leave me. They want my body, they want my shoulder, they want my dinners, they want my silence. But they never want me. I am not lovable. I never was. And if they keep me, It’s because I became a car left rotting in a garage — a trophy they no longer even want to touch. And if I tear myself open to make them fathers, my broken body is just another chore I’m expected to silently endure. And my children are always less mine than theirs. After all, I’m broken. I am not lovable. I never was. Some women are. Maybe 20%. The rest, like me, are function. Service. Emotional dumping ground. Sexual release. They talk about incels — men who get no love, no sex. Men who cry because they are invisible. And us? Us, w...
Read more

Jenny

she was all porcelain, expensive flowers and a young fragrance made from illegal casino money. she was all juicy strawberries between the legs Korean heart-shaped cakes cappuccinos worthy of Instagram posts. almond eyes during Easter time the one in which you want to eat the body and drink the blood. had a noble height and a free hair. had tears of pearls wishes in the form of diamonds. he wanted someone real, She wanted a Portuguese prince. with a bearded intellect. he wanted to read Lu Xun, she wanted to have clams by the seaside. he returned to his village in northern Portugal, she committed the most elegant suicide, leaving the Chanel earrings on the hanging corpse at the dining room.
Read more

Sara F. Costa

Image
Sara F. Costa is a Portuguese poet who has won several literary prizes in Portugal. She has published five books and has a degree in Oriental Languages and Cultures and an MA in Intercultural Studies: Portuguese/Chinese from Minho University, Portugal, and Tianjin Foreign Studies University, China. She has a Phd in Portuguese Studies, specializing in Literature. Her thesis explores the translations Camilo Pessanha made of Ming poems. In 2017, she was an invited author of the International Istanbul Poetry Festival 2017. In 2018, she worked with The Script Road-Macau Literary Festival and the China-European Union Literary Festival in Shanghai and Suzhou. Her works have been translated and featured worldwide in Literary Journals and Magazines, from Brazil to China. She lived in Beijing and coordinated writing and reading events with a Beijing-based arts collective called Spittoon. She is currently a Professor at Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal. 
Read more