Juliet Cook
My Eyes Are Spotted Owls
Cavernous dread about becoming nothing but teeth
and bones and crawling insects sometimes overtakes
the snow. Death and coldness and tons of snow
until I'm unsure how to grow anything. Until I wonder
if I'm shoveling myself into hell, turning myself in
to Satan. Into the only gallery I could serve as a model inside.
Then the Satanic tooth fairy starts tugging out
all of my remaining teeth, repeatedly screaming
that my tongue does not exist anymore.
That my voice is dead.
A Goat That Reminds Me of a Grasshopper
There might be a cricket stuck inside my wall.
Maybe it is outside, but its sounds
are too close to my head.
Maybe it is inside my heating/cooling vent.
Maybe it is inside my brain.
Wherever it is, it won't shut up.
Every night its sounds expand.
It grows into a high pitched green goat
that reminds me of a grasshopper.
Hiding within my bedroom's hissing mandibles,
my giant grasshopper alters the shape
and structure of the wallpaper.
Its bottom teeth plunge out of the wall
and into a poem, because where else can it go?
It sees me having a seizure on the fuzzy shag rug
that didn't exist yesterday. It sees me being pitched
across the room, strange words flinging out my mouth
into another uncertain land of the unremembered.
I can pretend my house has turned into a giant
green goat shaped hot air balloon that protects
and serves an unlimited number of grasshoppers
before it pushes me over the edge
and I splatter down hard. From sweet to bloody
oblivion. Synapses massacred.
Speech stilted forevermore.
Everyone used to be someone.
Everyone used to be young.
Juliet Cook is brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.