BIO
paulA neves is a native of Newark, NJ whose poetry, essays, book reviews, etc. have appeared in numerous publications, including Fiolet and Wing, Cleaver Magazine, The Abuela Stories Project, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora, and elsewhere. She is currently a teaching artist-in-residence for the Glass Book Project (glassbookproject.com) and her artwork is featured in several of its collections. A Canto Mundo fellow, she has also received scholarships/residencies from the Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Luso-American Development Foundation, and the Disquiet Literary Program. She is a member of the Kale Soup for the Soul collective (www.facebook.com/KaleSoupfortheSoul/), which has presented panels, readings and workshops nationwide. She is a graduate of the MFA program in writing at Rutgers-Newark and teaches for various university programs. For more info visit paulaneves.net or @Itinerantmuse .
Offerings Ofensas
— after an ad in the Lisbon Metro recalling PIDE’s victims
for more than a braid
of a daughter’s hair
or a son’s milk teeth
wrapped in chita
the priest-professor
told you to believe
so you believed
in economies of
ofertas
you believed in Fátima and fadistas
who sang of sailors
and their strong sea
legs, taking them
anywhere but Tarrafal
far from your honeyed
wax heart
far from the woman
like your mother
who carried your perfeito
coração
hoping the gulls would
eat from her hand
hoping just one would
have come
instead of PIDE to ask
what she had to offer
if she believed in her
own ofensas
perdoai as nossas…ai Senhor
if she believed her
feet were anchors
or there but for the
grace of God
pillars of a house
where they’d set old
smoke on fire
again and again
insisting
with eyes the brass of
chalices
that she shouldn’t
have