If the name Laura Gilpin rings a bell, it’s probably because of the “The Two-headed Calf,” a poem of haunting genius that has enjoyed a remarkable digital life since 2019— first as an illustrated webcomic, then as a meme, and, most recently, as a viral TikTok:
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass.
And as he stares into the sky, there
are twice as many stars as usual.
The poem is sublime in the true sense, joining the terrible and the beautiful with astonishing economy. It begins in foreboding, “Tomorrow when the farm boys find this / freak of nature” but ends with an insistence on peace, “tonight . . . there / are twice as many stars as usual.” It is the kind of writing that stays with a reader.
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