AGUR Is the Last Way I Learned to Say Goodbye

AGUR(2)Javi cuts the morcilla, flipping it into the pan. It is de casa, the pig. Homegrown. He tells me how they did it: men grasping hooves, the butcher, a woman catching blood in a 10-gallon bucket, beating it with her palm and thickening it with rice. Filling intestine casings, tying off sausage links. Javi cooks, his back to me, so I look at him the way I always want to look at him: deliberate on his arms and neck. I imagine being there to make blood sausages. To catch and beat and thicken. I eat, intestines sticking in my teeth.

 

Clare Boerigter has worked as a wildland firefighter, as an archaeologist’s assistant, and as a farm hand in País Vasco, Spain. She is an editor for First Class, a journal which publishes handwritten fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and other experimental forms that can fit on a postcard.

 

Photo credit: J. Dominiq

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *