Pink Pig

Just reread Selah Saterstrom's book The Pink Institution, thanks to the Susquehanna University Lit Club.

When I was little, I delighted in the short i, in its two different sounds. There's the short i of Pit and Pin and Pill. Then there's the short i in Pink and Pig. The difference is so slight that I would slip into it, saying pig and pink over and over again, wondering at that slight upturn of my lips.

Now S.S. finds a way to play with the beauty and the horror of this slippage. In a cover she designed, she presents a southern life, minus the Peculiar Institution, as the Pink Institution. Hanging upside down. Bleeding out. Catching breath.