Juliet Cook

Expired Eyeliner

You thought it was a vulture
on the side of the road,
but it was just a lonely chicken.

Isolated from any group
it used to belong to. Nothing
to eat except bits of rotting road kill.

Squawking at another drive by crowd
of non-listeners like a road-side poetry reading
in which the reader has exceeded her time limit.

Pieces swallowed down then spit out
or tossed out of the window in a bag
filled with fast food debris.

Even those who don't typically consume
fast food might be silently bloating inside
like another ignored dead deer.

Flies buzzing on the dulled-down eyelashes.
Expired eyeliner dripping inside my brain.

  

Dream State Collision Course Filled With Secrets

This flesh ripped inside dreams or is it
part of reality now? This headless body.
This bodiless head like some form of contraband
floating above the broken red
bed frames in the dark space
with shrapnel firing inside the cylinder
of my brain. Let's rock. I can't drive
my way out of this collision course. 

Multiple windshields crash
and crack against each other
and I can't decide which side
of the road I'm on because I'm surrounded
with evil doppelgangers, screaming
killers and I guess your face
must be curing the world

after you strangle me underneath your
mandatory death penalty pillow,
replace me with a poisonous snake
that can't speak for itself without biting.
You hiss in each other's ears, you don't think
anything you do is wrong. We have never seen
anything like it. Our nightmares are your dreams.
Your secrets are pillow cases filled with bloody lies.

(lines in Italics in the title and first stanza are from Twin Peaks - line in Italics in the second stanza is from part of the end of a series of clichéd quotes that a possible bot placed in the Comments section of a photo on my Facebook page. The Comment started with "Hi beautiful smile", although the Comment appeared beneath a photo of a poetry chapbook of mine called "REVOLTING" - line in Italics in the third stanza was said by the current President)

 

Juliet Cook doesn't fit inside an Easy-Bake Oven and rarely cooks. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications over the years. 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 she has another new chapbook, Blue Stingers Instead of Wings forthcoming from Pure Sleeze Press in Spring 2025.