GIGGLE OR GURGLE

Her voice sounds like marshmallow fluff
on the brink of liquefaction. Sweet stupefaction
as if we plucked her from a kiddy pool
filled with warm sugar water.

Sugar cubes in the pony
play casting call were dosed with chloroform
of molded sugar spiked and girls lined up to try.
They nuzzle open palms then turn fuzzy.


Sometimes we tell them it’s soft-core going in,
but it’s a different story coming out.

The Unemployment Red, White, & Blues

1. Red Stance

I don’t need the support.

The only reason I wear a bra is to stuff it
with rare pork chops
& bitter black walnut nipples.

Long ago, I shirked my retail duties.
I hid out in the stock room with some boy;
flashed him my cracked shell casings & bloody meat.

He retaliated by pulling a hermit crab
out of its shell and eating it.
It was so slimy & green

I almost admired him for the maneuver.
I almost thought it was some kind of performance art.

Later, he told me he had no interest in art.
I told him if he had no interest in art, then he had no interest in me.

I once killed a hermit crab, too,
when I underestimated my own aim
& lobbed a rock across the beach
& connected which totally crushed the thing.

Maybe that was a fluke.


2. White Stance

My Raynaud’s Phenomenon is flaring up again;
my fingers turning white, then blue, then red
like patriotism or a bomb pop. A disease of the extremities,
which in severe cases can lead to amputation.

I imagine my fingers replaced by cheap prosthetics
made out of popsicle sticks.

Flashback to that beach. Waterlogged sand
stuck in the crotch panel of my bathing suit.
I wondered how long before it turned into a mutant pearl.

Other girls stuff their panties with little figurines—
tiny plastic dolls and hard green army men.
Is this a reconnaissance mission, a strange form of shoplifting,
or a new job interview uniform?

My mother told me there was a secret dress code
and that’s why I should pull out my lip ring.
She also reminded me I shouldn’t use my poetry
as writing samples. My warped escapism hobby

isn’t working for me. Whatever the secret system supports,
it isn’t benefiting me. Maybe my pork chop performance
pieces should have been more well done.

The art museum deemed me overqualified.
The mental institution could sense my unease.
The office manager position could not appease my lacking
transportation situation. Even sex work has standards
I can’t meet (see my tits don’t need the support
and believe me, I’ve flashed them anyway.)

I’m a flasher. A flash in the sizzling pan,
with not enough fat rendered.

I’m left chewing my own gristle like worthless cud.


3. Blue Stance

I had to cut some of the meat out of my diet
& out of my lingerie. Too much blood seeping through.

I’m a network of obscene veins & unwanted hair
creeping all over a necrotic body.

Maybe I’m finally transforming
into some kind of werewolf;
eyes like glazed rocks lobbed
at small unsuspecting prey.

Maybe I’m on the prowl for a new kind of stuffing
to tear out, to consume, to unfray
like slimy sausage casings for grossly malformed fingers.

Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared in Diode, Diagram, Octopus, Robot Melon, SIR!, WOMB and many other fine online and print sources. She is the editor of Blood Pudding Press. She is the author of numerous quirky little chapbooks, most recently including Gingerbread Girl (Trainwreck Press), MONDO CRAMPO (coming soon from the dusie kollektiv 3) and PINK LEOTARD & SHOCK COLLAR (coming soon from Spooky Girlfriend Press). Her first full-length poetry collection, Horrific Confection was recently published by BlazeVOX. For more Juliet information, please feel free to visit her WEBSITE.