microwave

how to explain brazil to an extraterrestrial:

your face on a flag. they’d recognize

you as leader

and knock you off. dirty

part of the conquest.

but it already happened, in another shape: aerial

view of the amazon,

a hundred-odd

hydroelectric plants

to fry your eggs in the microwave.

and they’d finish you off: just

part of the conquest.

and what if they came

to tour the waterfalls?

or to be taught by the elite

how to make a democracy?

the spaceships cover the sky

completely.

all the offices and fast food joints declare

an end to the working day.

cockroaches and rats

fled first.

it’s christmas, carnival, easter,

our lady of aparecida, and the final judgment

all at once.

lovers fuck for the last time.

atms dry heave.

the supermarket was a cemetery!

the malls, the freeways!

to explain civil unions

to an iguana, to explain

political alliances to a cat, to explain

climate change

to an aquarium turtle.

it’s done, already. now, wait.

eat an activia.

dwell in philosophy. imagine!

in our tropical country ... disastrous!

not one river more. tragic!

worse than locusts,

your marvelous hydroelectric plants will be

seen, in flames, from sirius:

“my country was a sweet corn pamonha

that a starving alien

put in the microwave.”

watch us burn:

possible epitaph.