A billboard shaped like a cow is in a distant field.
Or—I am wrong. I pull over, let the car idle.
The grass bends. Whatever her living cells tell
me is enough: she is not a cutout. She is still.
I envy her. To stand in the traffic of the wind.
I marvel at so thin a line between life and object.
Is that how human shoots human, a belief
a being is a thing? She helps me understand.
She does not move, lets me know I do not
know the last time I was still. The cow sees
in color. But not red. The grass is green.
She has panoramic vision. I have blind spots.
I drive alone another three hours downstate.
No radio. No podcast. No news.
–
H.E. Fisher is the author of the collection Sterile Field (Free Lines Press, 2022). Her chapbook, Jane Almost Always Smiles, is forthcoming from Moonstone Press in September 2022. Her recent work appears in The Hopper, Indianapolis Review, Pithead Chapel, Dream Pop Journal, Miracle Monocle, Longleaf Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic, among other publications. H.E. was awarded the 2019 Stark Poetry Prize in Memory of Raymond Patterson at City College of New York, was a finalist in the 2020-21 Comstock Review Chapbook Contest, and has been nominated for Best of the Net.