{"id":58161,"date":"2026-01-12T07:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T12:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/?p=58161"},"modified":"2026-01-12T09:01:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T14:01:33","slug":"questions-i-could-not-ask-the-giant-in-her-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/poetry\/questions-i-could-not-ask-the-giant-in-her-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions I Could Not Ask the Giant in Her Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"<script>\nfunction showWarning_enUS() {\n    var content_warning_list = document.getElementById(\"content-warning-enUS\");\n\n    if (content_warning_list.style.display === \"none\") {\n        content_warning_list.style.display = \"block\";\n    } else {\n        content_warning_list.style.display = \"none\";\n    }\n}\n<\/script><div lang=\"en-US\" dir=\"ltr\" class=\"content-warning-container-ltr\"><p><strong class=\"content-warning-title\">Content warning:<\/strong><br\/><button onclick=\"showWarning_enUS()\">Show warnings<\/button><\/p><div class=\"content-warning\" id=\"content-warning-enUS\" style=\"display: none;\" ><p>This page contains: <\/p><ul><li>Animal cruelty\/death<\/li><\/ul><\/div><br\/><\/div>\n<p>Do you swallow big blue whale eyes straight out of the jar?<br \/>\nDo you ever leave the refrigerator door open<br \/>\nand just shovel them in your maw<br \/>\nin the middle of the night?<\/p>\n<p>Do you swirl them up with mountain-milk?<br \/>\nMake little baby-grey sorbets<br \/>\nthat you freeze by free-diving<br \/>\nto the place where the ocean loses light?<\/p>\n<p>Was your mother the sort to stop up storms when she stood tall?<br \/>\nAnd now do nearby lightning strikes ever feel at all like therapy?<br \/>\nOr are you still a little too small to handle that much energy?<\/p>\n<p>Is it in your nature to treat the tallest trees like broccoli?<br \/>\nWhen you entertain do you spend hours trying out new recipes<br \/>\nfor old growth salads?<br \/>\nOr are you more of a just let the birds fly right into your mouth type?<\/p>\n<p>Do you carry plumbing pipes around with you to stick in small town water towers?<br \/>\nDrink counties dry to whet your whistle?<br \/>\nOr do your boots have aquifers?<\/p>\n<p>Do your shoulder blades catch all the Drink n Wash that you will need for later?<br \/>\nOr does it all roll off your back?<br \/>\nDoes it splash?<\/p>\n<p>Does our world cake between your toes?<br \/>\nDo you ever get helicopters stuck up in your nose?<\/p>\n<p>And when you get up from a nap<br \/>\nDoes it remind you at all of founding a monument?<br \/>\nOr is it more like tilling the map?<br \/>\nOr something I didn\u2019t dare to guess at?<br \/>\nSomething closer to home?<\/p>\n<p>Do you ever see<br \/>\nany of the things that we<br \/>\nhave cut into the ground for you<br \/>\nOr do you have<br \/>\nBigger things to worry about?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>[Editor\u2019s Note: Publication of this poem was made possible by a gift from Ed Morland during our annual Kickstarter.]<\/em><\/p>\n<br class=\"clear_both\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you swallow big blue whale eyes straight out of the jar?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[730],"class_list":["post-58161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-no-content-warning"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p82q22-f85","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58161"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58307,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58161\/revisions\/58307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}