The Eighth Wonder of the World Visits the First Wonder of the World

Brian Oliu
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Except he can’t—the stories about not being able to squeeze onto buses, the inability to put him to sleep while sprawled out on an operating table, vertebrae rubbed smooth as a monolith. Where he grew up, mountains—pyramids, great in their own world, but not made by hands: it is a human marvel to make things hollow. Do not ask me about the scale of these things: the size of horizon plays tricks if you stare. They, too, cut me open and changed my name: took the sand out of my stomach, left triangles zigzagged across my waist.
A giant does not fit because a giant is the sum of his parts: a body built large, lungs the size of palm leaves, enough room to carry something more than a bad back and a reason to turn the lights out.
Even now, I do not understand the sizes of things, how much space I take up in the world, how anyone can fit their bodies into such a small piece of fabric. I am reminded every day of how easily the body opens: how I catch my skin at the wrong angle with a fingernail, how if I press my thumb into my chest hard enough I can burst through. There is more to say here but I do not know if I have the room—if I have the patience to see how far skin can stretch. Here are things I do know: when skin is sliced open and bunched it dries to a white flake. The reason you cannot picture a giant on an airplane is because they burned his body. You and I will never be pharaohs because you must burn me too. Do not bury me in something larger than what I am.

Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Tuscaloosa, AL. He is the author of So You Know It’s Me (Tiny Hardcore Press, 2011) a series of Craigslist Missed Connections, Level End (Origami Zoo Press, 2012), a chapbook based on videogame boss battles, Leave Luck to Heaven (Uncanny Valley Press, 2014), an ode to 8-bit videogames, and i/o (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2015), a memoir in the form of a computer virus. He is working on a series of essays about professional wrestlers.