Andrea Cohen

For Harry Cobb Soon I’ll move to Norway. If that’s a bitter pill, well, swill, swallow. I’m going, and I won’t wallow, not in Norway, where they’re so beyond slave labor, with laws that say a clerk must work within five meters of a window through which she can see a tree and by that tree be seen. My mind’s made up. I will be Norwegian with Norwegian trees. I’ll be seer and be seen. It’s a scenic scene, it’s how it goes, I’m going. Tell the top brass, if they ask, I don’t give a damn about their asses. But I will miss the beeches and the ashes. It’s not their fault I’m leaving. They’re only trees, and leaving, I’m Norwegian.

After Elinor Lipper The creature that had once been a man handed over his petition, a stained and grimy scrap, handed it to his lord and master, a petition asking to be transferred to the status of a horse. You son-of-a-whore, the master, kicking for good measure, bellowed. What do you mean by this? The creature that had once been a man, having considered deeply his petition, answered: If I were a horse, I would have one day off in ten. As is, I have none. As a horse, I could rest now and again during work. As a former man, I cannot. As a horse, I would be expected to perform work equal to my strength. As a prisoner, I am always hungry, and hungry, I work less and get less bread, so I can barely stand. A horse gets a stable and two blankets. I have no blankets, no jacket. If a driver beats a horse too hard, he is punished, for a horse is precious. If the brigadiers beat and kick me, it is like beating a tree. So you see, a prisoner is nothing here. But a horse? A horse is something! Inside the frozen and the broken vista, the plea had a ring of truth heard even by the lord and master, who had previously been a man himself, and who, when no other former men could see, attached that name to the page, granting the horse a stable and two blankets.

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. But not if you’re a butter cow, not if you’re a butter cow who’s seen, if not the land of milk and honey, the land of milk, and dwelled within it. It had a short life span, the butter cow. Before it died, I looked deep into its butter eyes. It saw my butter soul. I could have wept, or spread myself, for nobody, across dry toast.

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.