*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Thomas LuxThomas Lux's poem "Cow Chases Boys," as well as a recorded reading by Lux of the poem, was featured in March 23, 2015 issue of The New Yorker. Lux is a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication as well as director of the McEver Visiting Writers program and Poetry@Tech.
Cow Chases Boys
What we were thinking
was bombing the cows with dirt balls
from the top of the sandbank,
at the bottom of which ran a cave-cold
brook, spring-born.
We knew the cows would pass below
to drink and we’d pried our clumps of dirt
from a crumbling ledge. Here
August lasted a million years.
There was no “we,”I can tell you that now.
I did this alone. At one cow
I knew as old and cloudy-eyed
I threw the dirt balls as if it were a sport
at which I was skilled.
Boom, a puff of dust off her hip, boom, boom: drilled
her ribs, and neck, and one more
too close to where she made her milk.
She swung round and chased me up an apple tree.
Her rage surprised me, and her alacrity.
She looked up. I looked down at her.
As with many things, I did this alone.
We both knew we’d soon be called home.
