the cow lacks a name.
She – she defines as she

bends at the knees
to kiss grass.

some poet’s lexicon,
found scattered in

the flattened fields,
describes the cow

as the American idiom.
we talk in cows

of cows. of mass-
produced gentleness.

the book is of course
wrong. the American idiom

is the American dream.
The American dream

is a dream of sheep
who dream of being rams.