Juliet Cook, Daniel G. Snethen
and Alex S. Johnson

Carnivorous Worm

Malignant narcissist spitting more dirty fur
out of yammering mouth. First he acts like your pet
or a close friend, then he turns on you
and now he insists you are his.

He grows into a giant tapeworm,
ribbony, twisting around your lips, trying to stick,
eat your words, call them his own,
as if he has always owned you.

He wraps himself around an array of cold treats,
hiding inside an errant ice cream truck,
wretchedly retching out the same song,
turning up the volume until it gags and screams.

Assertive becomes invasive. He is
coiled around your legs,
as if your body belongs to him
whenever he wants it to. Now.

He revs up for more toxic,
spiked insertion. Misaligned proboscis
shoots out. Vomiting ribbon worm ready
to suck out your brain and replace it with him.

 

You Shouldn't Have Stood In Line

Another Ferris Wheel starts to break down
as soon as you're on top.

A song you don't like plays in your head for days,
months, years, maybe forever
doesn't exist.

Or maybe your brain was invaded
by another one of your own horrid habits.
Worm-infested wrong turns can be hard to escape.

Before the crash, you watch yourself disintegrate.
Nothing but a tiny red flare turning into corpse.
Briefly flickering and then disappearing.

That's what forever is.

 

Juliet Cook and Daniel G. Snethen:

The Beauty of Leeches

Blackberries, raspberries, and roses.
Everything that is beautiful,
everything that I love has thorns.
The thorns grow larger.
Expand to the size of a cat's canine teeth.
Fangs detach, hiss, growl, 
crawl under the bed.

One fang creepily maneuvers itself
up to the ceiling and then dangles down.
One of my eyes turns into a bulging
crab apple. Falls from the tree
hiding inside my closet.
While the other thorns wriggle
like ivory maggots beneath my bed.

I hear Vincent whispering in my ear,
not van Gogh, but Price.
"Oh starry, starry night."
And I fall asleep dreaming
of poisoned apples and cursed serpent's teeth.

The highest branch steals my favorite dress,
then tosses it down inside ice cold bath water
in a fairy tale bathtub filled up
with coagulating blood and leeches.
Wrists wrapped in briars. Blood suckers
stuffed and clogging the drain.

Then I awaken to the sound
of something sleeping in my bed.
A giant human sized leech I always dreaded
I would become one day. Blood replacing
every word as my parasitic jaws saw off my own head.

Juliet Cook, Daniel G. Snethen and Alex S. Johnson:

Three Headed Phantasmic Goremouthed Kaiju

Rounds of chaos bullets spit like watermelon seeds
from the barrel of a grave-gun.
Upon close inspection, they resemble
morbid fetuses, slammed-back eyes and screwed down
deoxyribonucleic proto-fascists shaped like honeydew melons.

This fascinating and festering symbiosis
tears tracks through the grossest ooze of fucked-up openings.  

The gravity-well teeters in the clownish spaceship
and is its own local hell. At the helm of the craft
sits the incomparable Mothra, capable of flying the ship,
powered by its own massive flight muscles,
if necessity and circumstance calls upon it.

The fetuses serve as peculiar propellers.
They create their own chirpy wailing semi-
tongue sounds. Then they start singing and break
dancing out of bloody stomach linings.

The slimy linings form the binding of a bleak grimoire
beyond the Necronomicon: this one's vastly worse
consisting of hexxed verse prophesying grisly death to humankind
in a storm of gore clowns, dropping like rain in a thunderstorm.

Hurling from the sky like blood red frogs
dressed as clowns and if you refuse
to watch this ongoing spectacular debacle,
then fatty gristle will replace your eyes.
Bloody frog tongues will become your new nipples.

Your grandpa will eat your frog legs
from the gaping mouth of the gargantuan gargoyle, Godzilla,
falling onto hallowed ground, sprouting—growing
into green-glowing gangrenous Garbanzo beans
eaten by greedy gluttonous galactic gibbons
brachiating for time eternal through forbidden vellum of antiquity.

 

Juliet Cook doesn't fit inside an Easy-Bake Oven and rarely cooks. But she does read, write, and submit poetry and her 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), with another new poetry chapbook, "REVOLTING", forthcoming from Cul-de-sac of Blood in fall 2024.

Daniel G. Snethen is a naturalist and poet native to South Dakota. He spends much of his free time chasing lizards, removing other reptiles from harm's way on our road-systems and watching birds. When he is not playing biologist, he can be found reading weird fiction.

Alex S. Johnson has worn many hats in his 57 years on the planet, including college English instructor, music journalist, editor, publisher, songwriter, human rights activist, artist and poet. His books include The Doom Hippies and The Death Jazz. He lives in Sacramento, California with memories of rock and roll grandeur and excess.