Love. Sex. Death. Meat. Traffic. Pets. In Cattle of the Lord, Rosa Alice Branco offers a stunning poetic vision at once sacred and profane, a rich evocation of daily life troubled by uneasy sacramentality.

In a collection translated by Alexis Levitin and presented in both Portuguese and English, readers find themselves in a world turned upside down: darkly comic, sensual, and rife with contradiction. Here, liturgical words become lovers’ invitations. Cows moo at the heavens. And chickens are lessons on the resurrection.

Over the course of the collection, Branco’s unorthodox—even blasphemous—religious sensibility yields something ultimately hopeful: a belief that the physical, the quotidian, and the animalistic are holy, too. Flesh, in all its meanings—the body of the other, caressed; the animals we abuse, and eat; the sacrificial offering of Christ—demands reverence.

Writing at the boundaries of sense and mystification, combining sensuous lyrics and wit with theological interrogation, Branco breaks down what we think we know about religion, faith, and what it means to be human. “Lord, how much compassion will it take for you,” her speaker cries, “To be godfather at the Sunday barbecue?”

About the Author

Rosa Alice Branco is the author of numerous collections of poems in her native Portuguese, which have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic. In English, her work was featured inNew European Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008) and has appeared in over thirty magazines, includingAtlanta Review, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, andThe New England Review. She lives in Porto, Portugal.

Alexis Levitins thirty-two books in translation include Clarice LispectorsSoulstorm and Eugenio de Andrades Forbidden Words. Recent publications includeTapestry of the Sun: An Anthology of Ecuadorian Poetry, cotranslated with Fernando Iturburu;Brazil: A Travelers Literary Companion; and Blood of the Sun by Brazils Salgado Maranhao.

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