The pig arrives in fragments.
First the nose, of course—
two black commas
arguing about a sentence
that hasn’t been written yet.

Then the ears,
two red exclamation marks
bent by experience,
listening in stereo
to everything humans never say
about what they eat.

Only later comes the rest,
poured in magenta and violet,
like someone spilled a cocktail
called Ethical Dilemma
over a sketchbook.

Behind it all:
a violet-blue sky,
evening or maybe early morning,
that exhausted time of day
when the world forgets
whether it’s winding down
or starting again.

The outline is done
by a hand that doesn’t trust itself,
scribbling, circling,
making three decisions per line
and keeping all of them.

No eraser.
No clean edge.
Just nervous honesty.

The pig’s eyes
are small white triangles
with black storms inside.
They don’t beg,
they don’t accuse;
they look like
they just cracked a joke
about capitalism
and are waiting to see
if you got it.

Spoiler:
you do,
but only half,
and the other half
is already living
in your shopping list.

This is not
a children’s book pig.
This is not
farm nostalgia,
no gingham,
no “Old MacDonald.”

This is a portrait photo
taken in a club
where the strobe lights malfunctioned
and turned moral ambiguity
into pure color.

Magenta blushes across the forehead
as if the pig has just been told
that people use it as an insult.

“You filthy pig.”
“You capitalist swine.”
“Male Schweinehund.”

The word pig
does heavy symbolic lifting
in the human language gym,
while actual pigs
stand knee-deep in reality
doing unpaid labor
as recycling systems
and future schnitzel.

Here, though,
in this pigture,
the pig gets the microphone.

It says nothing out loud—
pigs know better
than to trust quotation marks—
but the colors translate:

“Listen,
I am tired of being
your punchline,
your food,
your metaphor
for everything you dislike
about yourselves.

I am curiosity with cartilage,
nose-first philosophy.
My research method is simple:
sniff, nudge, dig, decide.

You build entire industries
on not seeing me.
I build entire mud palaces
on what you throw away.

Who’s the inefficient species here,
again?”

The snout shines
in bright red-pink,
a small target
for all your projections.

You point at it and say:
“cute,”
“funny,”
“delicious,”
depending on context,
never noticing
how quickly the categories flip.

The pig notices.
The pig keeps score
in a secret ledger
hidden behind its eyes.

Every time someone says “bacon”
with a little heart emoji,
a tiny mark appears
in the magenta layer.
That’s why the color
looks so saturated.

The line work runs wild
around the cheeks and jaw,
as if the hand refused
to impose discipline on flesh.

This is anti-anatomy,
a refusal of the clean diagram.
No textbook cross-section,
no neat labels:
ear, jowl, shoulder, ham.

The drawing knows
those words have knives in them.

Instead it offers movement,
fuzz,
overlapping curves—
a body that keeps escaping
conceptual cages.

Behind the ears,
the purple-blue background
presses forward,
a nearly-night sky
or maybe the wall
of an abstract sty.

Whatever it is,
it doesn’t quite fit.
It bleeds into the outline
like an environment that refuses
to stay external.

Because environment
is never really “around” a body,
it’s inside,
circulating as air and feed
and antibiotics
and stress
and stories.

The pig knows this instinctively.
You, the viewer,
have to read books
to catch up with that insight.

The right ear droops,
red fading into darker red,
like a flag after too many storms.

The left ear tilts,
listening for something
beyond the page:
perhaps the rumor
that somewhere out there
are humans
who draw pigs
just to look at them
and not to sell them.

If that rumor is true,
this drawing is evidence.

Yet even here
consumption sneaks back in.

You consume the image,
scroll, pause,
feel something between
tenderness and discomfort,
then move on.

The pig remains,
staring after you
with those triangular eyes,
holding your brief attention
like a crumb.

DADA, of course,
is delighted.

DADA loves
this confusion of registers:
cute and critical,
playful and political,
marker-pen colors
doing heavy philosophical work.

DADA whispers in the pig’s ear:

“You are now
an anti-logo,
a brand ambassador
for unbranded life.

Every time someone says
‘nice drawing’
they will also feel
the small stone
of unease
in their shoe.”

The pig snorts approval.
Or maybe that’s just
a darker line
around the nostrils.

In the corner
there is no signature yet,
only a tangle of strokes
that looks suspiciously like
the start of another snout.

Because one pig
is never alone.

Behind this face
are millions more,
unseen, unnamed,
their stories flattened
into supply chains.

This one, though,
refuses flattening.

It bulges out of the page,
magenta and red
like a siren flare,
announcing in silent oink:

“I am here.
I am specific.
I am not a category.
You just looked at me
for longer than usual.

That is already
a small revolution
in the empire of ignoring.”

Eventually you will
close the tab,
put down the print,
walk into your kitchen
where the fridge waits
with its quiet binary of Yes/No,
Eat/Don’t.

But some part of you
will carry this face,
its scruffy lines
and electric blush,
into that everyday arena.

Maybe you’ll hesitate,
just a second longer,
before you reach
for whatever you usually reach for.

Maybe you’ll hear,
very softly,
under the hum of habit,

a magenta whisper:

“Choose,
but know
that you are choosing
among stories,
not just flavours.”

And somewhere on the page,
the pig will smile
its crooked DADA smile,

because for once
the oink
made it
all the way
into the decision.