GIANT COW THAT INTERNET LOVES IS NOT ACTUALLY A GIANT COW | SHEVAUN BRANNIGAN
A week ago, you flew on an airplane, in its pressurized cabin
where oxygen masks are tucked away like testicles. And
I worried until I got your text.
Then everyone fell in love
with the photo of this Holstein named Knickers, 6’4” & nearly 3,000 pounds,
a steer standing mighty amid brown splotches of cows up to his knees.
And I saw the picture, days after Knickers had been debunked,
bigger than gender but really a male, really a different breed, and in the image
of this enormous beast wearing the costume of a dairy cow sans bell,
I saw my fear.
Now I type in a waiting room, after our selfie of you in hospital gown, blue cap,
my face perched on your shoulder like a parrot thinking last photo, last photo.
There’s this board with assigned case numbers and your number
has three sixes in it, is coded green, surgery in progress,
but when I glanced I thought it was surgery in panic,
pictured them in scrubs
flailing their hands, gauze flying around the room, and you, terribly terribly terribly still.
I’m trying to fit in and failing.
At work, at a party,
everywhere I go including this waiting room. A couple bickers, the woman:
don’t you have a surgery to go to yet? the man: yeah I’m hoping I don’t wake up.
Your number has been green an hour now.
Magenta for finishing surgery, beautiful, my sister, the physics professor,
telling us the female eye, something to do with cones, (I wasn’t quite listening),
finds pink more vibrant than males’ eyes do, which is why
little girls like pink. Well what, I said, now an expert, does it mean to like something.
Why would vibrancy equate to preference? And given Jo Paoletti’s research
on gender, color, clothing in America, what about how red
used to be for boys?
When you, the beloved I mean, walked into the cafe
the first day we met, you were vibrant, to say, I would choose you. I felt like Knickers
might have felt when he heard he was too big to be slaughtered, maybe I mean,
I’ve been too much for so many years to meet you.
It’s romantic, I know, me
as this giant hulking creature in a field, and you open the door to the field,
and you’re pink (it was December, it was cold--your cheeks).
Recovery is a muted red, there’s this early-PowerPoint gradient fade.
When is the most scared. I mean what is the most risk. They lulled me out
of terror, the cogs of nurses, the gears of anesthesiologists, it’s routine surgery,
they said, like haven’t you ever heard of a traditional plane crash? I am recovery-ing
my even breath. Dear 868660,
01001001 0010000
01101100 01101111
01110110 01100101
00100000 01111001
my last words to you
were have a good one and then we both laughed, you already a little looped.
This nurse is yammering on about people bombarding her when this guy in scrubs
walks in the waiting room with his head in his hands, sighing!
Like this is a place
where you can do that. I don’t know what I’ve done: to deserve you; in the last hour.
Maybe I’m a genius but I’m not very good with people and I’m certainly not
a genius.
How long is recovery? Mine, yours, mine, the patient over whom the man in scrubs sighs,
yours, the farm from its inquiries about Knickers,
Is anyone here
When does the phone calm, what does being viral
have in common
with going in love, hooves and fear, I would welcome to be less
is anyone here
for Frank?
The door between us is language, is I am for Frank,
here for Frank,
here,
Frank.
Shevaun Brannigan’s work has appeared in such journals as Best New Poets, AGNI, and Slice. She is a recipient of a Barbara J. Deming Fund grant, and holds an MFA from Bennington College.
Cover image by Zachary Schomburg: photos of walls in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, an area that is very flat. The horizon lines on theses walls mimic that flat horizon line on its landscape.
