Internal Suffocation, poems by Juliet Cook

Internal Suffocation

I'm an adult so I'm allowed to watch

as many horror films as I choose.

Some people say that has a bad effect on my brain.

I do sometimes have violent dreams, but

the last disturbing dream I had based on a movie

was re-seeing the rape scene from Boys Don't Cry,

which was based on a real life hate crime.

Sometimes I like some extremity in movies and art

because I can turn them off, turn them back on,

re-interpret them, revise them, re-analyze them,

do whatever I want with them.

Other times I can't control

what my own mind sees

or what happens to me.

Sometimes my mind exaggerates things.

Other times it blocks things out.

Sometimes my brain cells discharge

uncontrolled electrical activity.

Sometimes it's not up to me.

When it is, I'll watch whatever I want to,

whether it's based on real life or exaggerated make believe.

Internal Suffocation

I know what's starting to happen.

I've heard this before, this wooshing

inside my brain as the room disappears.

I sit down on the floor and shut my eyes.

Then I'm suddenly back up on my feet

and confused about what day it is,

what time it is, what I was doing,

how long my seizure lasted and why

I wrote a bunch of people's names

on a sheet of paper. Why I rearranged

rows of clothes in my closet and piled

rows of books in front of a suitcase.

I don't remember doing any of this.

I don't remember where I thought I was going to go.

I do remember who I am though.

Demolished flesh that nobody wants to look at.

Least of all me.

Shaking around out of control,

groaning a low guttural moan

that dries into a hiss.

Acidic vomit drips

from a vulture's mouth. Clotted

saliva is mixed up with blood then rots.

The good parts get eaten up and shit out.

Haggard Hooded vulture woman

with nothing better to do than grunt and swallow

her own semi-digested dead heart.

Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of print and online publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including "DARK PURPLE INTERSECTIONS (inside my Black Doll Head Irises)" (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 9, 2019) "Another Set of Ripped-Out Bloody Pigtails" (The Poet's Haven, 2019), "The Rabbits with Red Eyes" (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2020) and "Histrionics Inside my Interior City" (part of Ghost City Press's 2020 Summer Micro-Chapbook Series).

Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, “Horrific Confection", was published by BlazeVOX. She's also included in a full-length collaborative poetry book, "A Red Witch, Every Which Way", with j/j hastain, published by Hysterical Books in 2016. Her most recent full-length individual poetry book, "Malformed Confetti" was published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2018.

Cook also sometimes creates abstract painting collage art hybrid creatures.

Find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

Ed Dorn's # 22 From Twenty-four Love Poems

from Jacket The strengthy message here in #22 of 24 Love Songs can be summed up in two lines: ['There is/no sense to beauty. . .' and '. . .How/ the world is shit/ and I mean all of it] What I also like about this brief poem is the interplay between the title of the book and the subject of the poems (love/anti-love (which is not hate)): it's all a mass of contradictions, like love. And I have to say that the shorter poems of the Love Songs and the last book he wrote before dying (Chemo Sábe) seem to me much better and more memorable than the Slinger/Gunslinger poems. These (generally) later poems probably attempt less stylistically, but are more sure-handed, hacked from a soap bar, maybe. Easy to use, but disappear after use. In any case, Dorn is well worth the reading and re-reading, for me, though he'll never become one of my favorites. And doesn't every poet want that, dead or alive? ;-) #22 The agony

Mike James

The River’s Architecture for Louis McKee, d. 11/21/11 The river has a shape you follow with your whole body: shoulder, footstep, and ear- those who know how to listen hear how river wind is like breath, alive in lung and line. Mike James makes his home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has published in hundreds of magazines, large and small, and has performed his poetry at universities and other venues throughout the country. He has published over 20 collections and has served as visiting writer at the University of Maine, Fort Kent. His recent new and selected poems, Portable Light: Poems 1991-2021, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His last collection, Back Alley Saints at the Tiki Bar, was published in April by Redhawk. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, TN.

Weldon Kees

Along with my Jack Gilbert kick, I've been reading the poems of Weldon Kees as well as the secondary material (very little of which seems to be available in book form), which is too bad. There's a pretty good book called Weldon Kees and the Mid-Century Generation: Letters from 1935 to 1955 , which is structured in such a way that it seems more like a biography in letters. Normally, a writer's letters are collected and footnotes are rare except to sometimes identify confusing timelines. Robert Knoll includes more narrative about Kees than it does letters. I think otherwise it might not have made a full book, otherwise.Very interesting anyway. Kees seemed poised for mainstream uber-success at 41 years old when he simply disappeared. His car, with the keys still in it, was found near the Golden Gate bridge, but with no trace of whether he committed suicide or simply ran off to Mexico, as he talked of frequently in his last years. James Reidel's book Vanished Act: t

Live Nude Poems

Search This Blog