Poetry: Selections from Juliet Cook

Your Grey Is Not Ash

 

They tell you your grey must turn

itself in to black or white or else

you are invisible.

Your feelings are muzzled tightly

around the neck, wrapped

cloak of silence.

 

Don't let your silence burn
into sheer apathy.

Exclusive Convoluted Concussions

 

They want us to talk in small, quick texts.
They want us to rush to their

recommended conclusions.

They want us to type clichés
without thinking for more

than a few short minutes.

They want us to join another group.

Fit in. Assume their assumptions
are new. Act as if their spastic consultations
are truly shocking. Type more short

circuited, almost automatic praise

to the latest leader of this crazed bandwagon.

Secondary members get cut off
or caught up in the outrage
of fluctuating speculative membranes.

Glistening fluid spews itself out 

from underneath the latest console,

gets swallowed up then re-harvested

 

into dissected bits of corn dogs worn as baubles
around a slew of tiny middle finger party favors, 
as if vintage plastic babies are suddenly new
demigods.   I'm not a member of this colossal 

doll-house. I'm out of alignment inside 
my own space.  I don't want anyone

to follow me and I don't plan to follow the leader. 

Intermittent Brain Matters

Sometimes you act too casual 
about important matters.
Other times you freak out
aggressively about minutiae. 

Sometimes you give up
on all these fucked up
emotional meltdowns, hailstorms,
then extra dry land losing green.

Sometimes you get sick
of sharing what feels like
the overly casual parts of this matter,
while the darker matters are still 

 

inside your brain, increasingly bleak,
dulled down by pill-shaped insecticides.
Until the insects die or explode or

incorporate their own new mental intermediary.

Expired Casserole

 

Heart beat in my ears.
Heart beat in my mouth.
Soon I'll spit my heart out
onto your dirty dinner 
plate. Splattering deli 
platter sauce. You are

what you eat and
you ate my heart and
you told me it was stale.
I left you a tip of two scents.
All I have to say is cut apart
sausage drenched in gravy. 

Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of print and online publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently including "red flames burning out" (Grey Book Press, 2023), "Contorted Doom Conveyor" (Gutter Snob Books, 2023), and "Your Mouth is Moving Backwards" (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2023). She has another new poetry chapbook, "REVOLTING", forthcoming from Cul-de-sac of Blood in fall 2024. Her most recent full-length poetry book, "Malformed Confetti" was published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2018.