THE COWS DOWNTOWN
				    
        "Titled 'Cows On Parade', the public art exhibition features artistically 
        decorated cows strategically placed along the Magnificent Mile, Museum 
        Campus and in the loop." 

        - David Mendell, "City Goes Cowabunga Over Art," 6/16/99 The Chicago 
        Tribune 
  
I roam Chicago's crowded streets 
with herds of shoppers and tourists 
who pour past a talented saxophone player 
with faces locked: don't make eye contact, don't make eye contact.... 
  
And children force their parents to stop 
at art, at fiberglass cow-shapes bolted to the sidewalks, 
  
at Sundae Cow, 
Moo Blue Cow, 
Lucky Cow, 
at Holy Cow!, 
Kevlar Cow, 
This Is Not A Cow, 
Piping Cow, 
Marble Cow, 
A Cow Could Get Used To This. 
  
A man reads poetry on a corner, trumpeting: 
"Do you, cow, do you at last look interested in what surrounds you?" 
and a flock of pedestrians bursts past, 
no eye contact, thinking people who raise voices like that, 
who read poetry out loud, they must be off medications, don't 
make 
eye contact! 
  
But cows are safe.   
Even Guernsica. 
Even Colonized Bovine 
makes points you can overlook in the whimsy, 
they won't ask for money, won't need to buy cheap whiskey, 
won't talk too much about Jesus and blood and devils, won't knife you. 
  
Just ask Rudi, The Yodeling Cow; 
Bettsy The Syber-Cow; 
Verticow, The Ow Cow. 
  
There's nothing wrong with Wow Cow, 
The Spring Cow, 
Well Read Cow, 
The Conscious Cow, 
Community Cow, 
there's nothing wrong with cows, nothing wrong with art. 
  
My feet are clopping across the avenues 
through stampedes of strangers, 
cover us in paint and rhinestone, free us 
from what holds us in.