So I buy a record of Fernanda Maria because

she raises her thick eyebrows like Frida Kahlobecause an ink black shawl slashes across her breasts,and she juts out her chin,looks down her nosebecause you have left me,and she seems like she could handle it.

So I buy the record with sing-a-long textbecause Fadista! is a word I'd liketo own as an antidote to others—poetess, niceness, possess, these leakingmouthfuls, how they lack the bulletpuncturing the earth at its end. I imagine hips.

Because as the text says: Life is short;we cannot prevent its sorrows. BecauseFado and the bulls are the great pleasures,and my father studied the corrida; he too is gone.Everything now is saudade, the nostalgia

of the empty arena. The air has replaced youbeside me. So I will take Fernanda Mariafrom her covers and let the needle wake herto rough consonants and exclamation points,the guttering of vowels in an empty throat.