The pink look

Inspired by a poem by Victoria Kennefick

 

When I eat pork I remember madness:

the blackness of that other mouth, as if Goya

had painted it on his dining room walls;

deranged and dark, it is the absolute

of Saturn Devouring His Children. 

 

That other mouth does not recall the spit rod hard-on

or how you wrapped yourself in bacon and made

an offering of meat – only you, as you were

before the first pig-eared twitch of excitement;

you, when your genitals had the pink look of a newborn.

 

Dimitra Xidous’ work has been published in literary journals in Canada, Ireland, and the US, including Room, The Stinging Fly and The Penny Dreadful. Her debut collection Keeping Bees was published by Doire Press in 2014.  She was a finalist in The Malahat Review Open Season Awards (2014).  She was short-listed for the Bridport Prize (2013) and the Over The Edge Emerging New Writer (2013) and long-listed for the Montreal International Poetry Prize (2011).  She has work forthcoming in Hallelujah for Fifty Foot Women (Bloodaxe, 2015). Originally from Ottawa, Canada, she currently resides in Dublin, Ireland.