Levitating Painted Eggs

I don’t want to bloom where I was planted,

singing the songs I was trained,

arranged by your group.
I want to write my own hybrid

words, rearrange myself into new 

shapes. Grow inside any space or form

or continuum I choose for myself.

Paint eggs whatever color I’m drawn

towards today and then crack them open.

What if the kindness doesn’t last,
because nothing lasts forever?

I’m deleting more hostile attack dogs 

from my online petting zoo.
Then my space gets overtaken

by overly needy pets
who all want to be everyone’s favorite,

even though they’re not good listeners.

They wail and moan and piss 
on other people’s lawns, in other people’s

books. They claim they deserve more attention.

I’m tired of sorting through all these red flags

of blood and filth and food coloring

trying to shove itself in my face. More

hellbent pollywogs are leaping out of ponds, 
as if their wet tails are wings. Aiming sky high
until they sink. Crashing around aggressively. 

Looming then partly blooming then fading

away from me, giving up, drying out.

Red lines turn brown and slightly rancid.

Draw scavengers, vultures, insidious eyes.

Dismantled pieces are torn asunder or atrophy.

Wither into shriveled silent nothingness.

SMOLDERING OBSERVAORY

I wasn’t born thinking of vaginal atrophy

or black sunflowers. These thoughts 
developed over time. I remember my dad

holding me up to touch the sticky surface 

of the extra high yellow sunflower

which had been planted when I was a girl.

Now every year, the sunflowers die faster.

Dead Saints tortured and burnt are coming
back to life in my dreams tonight and I am
pissing on the floor in a strobe light dance club

while wearing a tight lioness costume whose color

reminds me of acid induced sunflowers

screaming again. In the church library, 

I stole a book about the torture of Saints.
It was akin to reading smoldering horror gore

before I was allowed. In other words,
Catholicism is what introduced me 
to horror, torture, judgment, hell,

burning under the surface. Ashamed
about anyone else tasting my brackish waters.
My seedy yellow teeth and blackening heart.

SHATTERED THINK TANK

She had already been cremated 

by the time you found out she was dead.

She had already been judged 

by the other judgment maker.

You remember her extra baggy jeans.
Tons of black mascara. Eyelashes possessed.

Accusatory whether her eyes were
open or closed. Grave digger or undertaker.
Under eye bags growing larger in death.

If you must write her obituary inside your head
as a form of erasure, at least tear
off some of her made up eyelashes

and glue them to your own eyelids.

You were relatives after all. 
She’s not new anymore but neither are you.
Maybe part of her face is plastered
inside the USED PENS container
in your primary care doctor’s office.

Word Paralysis 

She was a stroke victim that all she could say was, “There, There” like she was trying to console you.

(a quote by Jonathan S Baker, taken from their Facebook page)

But what if she was trying to console her own brain?

Transfer her damaged parts out of the ether or

any place other than stuck inside her head?

What if she was trying to promote herself

to herself? Praying that another word 

would emerge one day, instead of just

there, there. She wanted to remember

her name. She could feel it inside her head,
but it wouldn’t come out. She could see its general

length but didn’t know how to say it. 
Her syntax was running backwards.
The speech therapist yelled at her
for getting upset that she couldn’t express herself

the way she used to. She was supposed to feel lucky
she was still alive and not just a puddle of drool

dripping down an unnamable face. Not entirely paralyzed.

She wants to let others know how she feels, but she can’t
get the words out. She wants to ask if this will be temporary
or permanent, but before she comes anywhere close

to revealing her words, everyone else has left.

Her session has ended and she still can’t 
explain where she is. She can’t recall the word
of the room she’s in. An emaciated kitchen? A tiny shutter?
A stuttering shudder? An intersection with you? Who are you?

Where is she? On a sectional couch in her least favorite

color which she can’t remember the word for either?
A moldy purple bathroom? A lonely grey bedroom? Broken 
closet door which stays locked shut from the inside? 

Is she still there? There? Will she be trapped there forever?
A nebulous cumulonimbus cloud stuck in her head.
Space slightly askew like some sort of unnamed

internal war zone. Imposter of herself inside herself.

Juliet Cook doesn’t fit inside an Easy-Bake Oven and rarely cooks. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary 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), “Your Mouth is Moving Backwards” (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2023), “REVOLTING” (Cul-de-sac of Blood, 2024), and “Blue Stingers Instead of Wings” (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025). Her most recent full-length poetry book, “Malformed Confetti” was published by Crisis Chronicles Press. You can find out more at https://julietcook.weebly.com/.