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"Beyond brilliant, The Cow is a manifesto of the paradoxical girl-state in which disappearance beckons through presence."—Chris Kraus
This text is filthy and fertilized, filling and emptying, filling and emptying, atrocious and politic with meaning. The Cow is a mother, a lover, and a murdered lump of meat, rendered in the strongest of languages. "I cannot count the altering that happens in the very large rooms that are the guts of her.
To call Ariana Reines’ poetry scatological doesn’t even scratch the surface. “I COULD BE A DIAPER FOR THE DAY’S RESIDUALS,” she writes, and, “She clasped the event to her and proceeded. Fucked her steaming/ eyehole and ended it.” The Cow is a body in the way that texts are bodied—”Are you so intelligent your body doesn’t have you in it.”—but not in the way that allows the text to become desensitized, depersonalized, sterilized. Instead this text is filthy and fertilized, filling and emptying, filling and emptying, atrocious and politic with meaning. The Cow is a mother, a lover, and a murdered lump of meat, rendered in the strongest of languages. “I cannot count the altering that happens in the very large rooms that are the guts of her.”
"...made me realize you could be a girl and loving and compassionate and vulgar and voracious and excessive and ugly and smart. She gave poetry guts, and she gave me and so many other female poets/queer poets/weirdo poets the guts to be female/queer/weird. Give this book to your most fearless pal, the one who makes art and doesn’t give a fuck what other people think, to let her know she’s got some allies. "—Jenny Zhang, Rookie
"[The Cow] works through the name of the livestock meant for food against a disparaging remark used against girls and women as her focal point, and working out from that into magnificent poems that challenge, push and even punch their way through the page. An exciting, vibrant, passionate and highly intelligent first poetry collection, first poetry collections rarely get as good as this; a clean sense of self, a clear sense of goals, and a smart, clear sense of how the poems fit together as a whole unit...From the bodies of ruined animals to the bodies of ruined women, The poems in The Cow push hard against prevailing winds that somehow feel less strong after the push; this is a fiery and powerful "'uck you'; this is a book about hope."—Rob McClellan, Rob McClellan's Blog
"The Cow, Reines’s first book, opens lyrically: “The day is a fume. At starboard, a white kirtle which is the moon. The day has a hallmark, the night also.” This lyricism is sustained for a few poems, but soon thereafter the sensual grit of Reines’s project rears its head and dominates the book: “I held his cock while he peed with it.” The Cow draws its imagery extensively, and explicitly, from the cow, its body, and the human and its body; it flirts with a certain grrrl fierceness, but the work ultimately feels less invested in gender per se than in humanness. The book as a whole is concerned with processing, production, and rendering, and while a poem might focus on the processing of an animal into various products for human consumption, Reines is also concerned with how we humans are “processed” through our relationships with others and through the approximations of language. Both identity and meaning are multifarious, interconnected:"—Emily Wolahan, Boston Review
"Ariana Reines enacts a poetics of disaster, overflow and obscenity. Her first book, The Cow, is “'s a voluptuary, a vat of mushy ideals and disgusting feelings. She states that she has often 'resented the cleanliness and elegance of tight and perfect writing', and 'felt that writing should be dirtier and more excessive...' The centre of subjectivity in these poems rapidly shifts from site to site, though a stream of carnage, holes, tearing and animality, in which language fails and falls back on tropes of self-doubt, self censorship and interruption: 'I am part of something because my life is so stupid,' the eruption of 'CROTCH,' refocusing attention on the materiality of the process of composition."—Ross Brighton, A Pelt, A Shrub, A Soil Sample
"To refer to The Cow, as poetry, seems rather reductive – it feels more like a living creature. Using the cold, clinical language of the abattoir, mixed with a fragmented cut-up of various characters – Reines has sculpted a multi-faceted yet cohesive voice that forces the reader into avenues of sex, scat and violence. Words don’t do this thing justice."—Thomas Moore
CONTENTS
MILK DEBT 1
BOOK FORGIVE EVERYTHING 2
FONT 3
BLOWHOLE 4
DECORTICATED 5
Q. DOES A DAY THAT IS EMPTY DENUDE ANYTHING 7
THE SEED IS ROTTEN UNDER THEIR CLODS 8
AFTER I DIED I TRIED TO BECOME THE NIGHT 9
SE TROUVER DANS UN TROU, AU FOND D’UN TROU 10
KNOCKER 11
MY BELOVED PUT IN HIS HAND BY THE HOLE OF THE
DOOR, AND MY BOWELS WERE MOVED FOR HIM 13
I WANT YOU TO INJECT MY FACE WITH BOTULISM 14
NICO SAID EXCREMENT FILTERS THROUGH THE
BRAIN. I’S A KIT 15
BILLET 16
I COULD BE A DIAPER FOR THE DAY’S RESIDUALS 17
I LOVE MY EMERGENCY 18
OBLATE 19
AND HE SHALL PUT HIS HAND UPON THE HEAD OF THE
BURNT OFFERING 20
AND BLINDLY WE FOREFEEL 22
I AM NO PROPHET, I AM AN HUSBANDMAN 23
EVERY ACCRETION MUST MODIFY ME. I WANT IT TO DO
SO. I WANT TO ASSIMILATE IT ABSOLUTELY 24
ANTHEM 25
IN WHICH SHE PAYS FOR HER TARDINESS 26
ITEM 31
IN THE MOST HOLY PLACE SHALT THOU EAT IT 38
FATED 39
AND MY FATHER IS THE HUSBANDMAN 40
DEAR MARGUERITE 41
MARGUERITE DURAS 44
EARMARK 46
DOCUMENTARY POETRY 47
PLEASE BE THE BEEF, PLEASE BEEF, PLEASURE IS NOT
WAILING. PLEASE BEEF, PLEASE BE CARVED CLEAR,
PLEASE BE A CASE OF CONSIDERATION 49
ADVERTISEMENT 52
TROPE 53
VALVE 54
A CLEANER, SAFER WORLD 55
CONCENTRATION 59
RENDERED 65
TIME SLOT 84
BELL 85
ATE SHAFT TO HILT TRYING TO BE BORING MAKING MORE OF IT
THAN SHOULD BECAUSE 87
THE WELD AND WOAD 88
LEFTOVERS 89
LE LEGS DE SES TRISTESSES 90
SECONDS 93
INSIDE OF THE WITNESS THERE IS A MISTAKE 94
TRANSPORT 97
LODGE 100
BLOOD LIBEL 103
REST 104
HABEAS CORPUS 105
YOU 106
AFTERWARD 107