Brutal
Brutal to give
the prisoner a window —
a blue sky glimpse —
as if an afterlife
existed. Brutal
for you to parade
in a body
in the same
room where I dream you.
Andrea Cohen
Butter
I’ ve never seen the land
of milk and honey, but at
the Iowa State Fair I glimpsed
a cow fashioned of butter.
It lived behind a window
in an icy room, beneath klieg lights.
I filed past as one files
past a casket at a wake.
It was that sad: a butter cow
without a butter calf. Nearby I spied
a butter motorcycle, motorcycle-
sized, a mechanical afterthought
I thought the cow might have liked to ride.
You don’ t drive a motorcycle; you ride it.