[bonus track]
Gabriela Gomes
Volume Three, Issue One, “Atmospheres of Violence,” Poetry
[bonus track]
ode to chlorine
oh khlorós!
this is your greek name.
oh greenish colored gas!
greenish like brasil!
oh chlorine!
dear chlorine!
you are one of the chemical elements
you have a clarified symbol as the
flash of a clear word and like it you have
the atomic number 17
oh chlorine, does the number 17
not remind you of something?
oh chlorine!
you are the 17 like the number of bolsonaro
that brasilian capivara
oh chlorine!
like him you can also be used as
a toxic weapon chlorine!
he loves all weapons and stands up for them all
oh chlorine!
oh he would praise you if he knew
you were used as one of the main
weapons of world war two!
hurray for the war! hurray for the coup!
oh chlorine!
like him you too are bitter,
irritant and rare on earth
oh chlorine!
and like him you can be used
for bleaching and disinfecting
everything that is wrong
let’s straighten this country!
no more easy living!
oh chlorine!, you to change everything
were you pass through, wrinkle the fingers
of people such as he wrinkles
foreheads since he started
twitting!
oh chlorine! do you have a
twitter account too? do you run away
from debates too!? oh chlorine
you have the color of brasil!
you are below fluoride and beside
sulfur!
surely you stink like they do!
oh chlorine! our Bolsonaro has the
power to destroy an entire country
in just 3 months
isn’t it funny that like you
he too gathers strength in
negativity?
i had never seen anyone boil
in a negative environment, but
the laws of chemistry say that yes,
it is possible, at −33,97°C
oh chlorine! if you two were to meet
it could be lethal to the earth
“[bônus track]” by Gabriela Gomes. Published in Cloro. Flan de tal, Portugal, 2019. Translated from the original Brazilian Portuguese by Nuno Marques.
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Gabriela do Amaral (she/her) is Brazilian, poet, writer, designer, and researcher. She holds a Master's degree in Literary, Cultural, and Interarts Studies at the University of Porto, Portugal, where she has lived since 2017. She is the author of several books, including Língua-mãe, published in 2021. She writes about language, exile, and also facilitates online workshops about writing, reading, and feminist production. As a researcher, she is interested in collaborations between science (sociology), art, community and ecology, in the relationships of life and death and the possibility of poetic creations in a degraded world. She believes that creating new worlds can be used as a tool for more active reflection on the part of society. She is also an amateur of tap dancing and astrology.