A Poetry Showcase by Juliet Cook and collaboration with Darryl Shupe when noted

photo from pixabay

Rippling

The doll's twisted nerves float around this bedroom
then start flying
then start crashing
down in every room in the house.

Ripping the wallpaper open;
searching for the angel who disappeared.

Something lives underneath the static.
Turns up the rippling electric sound so he can't be found.
Hides in the dank basement so he can't be seen until you are
all the way down and he's ready to make you scream to death.

Glass Figurines With Stained Blood

She doesn't see what she doesn't want to see. Part of me
can pretend I don't see it either. Another glass
figurine stained with blood, but we keep on pretending
it's red paint, at least until it dries. The color quietly darkens,
then starts cracking into broken pieces. But I didn't throw it
directly at anyone's face. I didn't throw it on the floor.

I also didn't throw it away. I shoved parts of it inside myself.
I slid parts of it underneath my little table, where it remained
hidden for quite awhile until she stepped on the glass. Both of us
pretended it was just more red paint, then looked away, shut our eyes.
My loaded garbage can turned into a small sawmill.
I just didn't see the saw's teeth until it was too late.

Museum of Impending Death
 
I don't want to be a nude model on a hospital bed,
upside down, with a ventilator inside me,
catheterized, internally screaming,
but unable to speak
until I get better or die.

With dyed blood red hair
turning white on the top of my head,
as my brain breaks down.
As I turn into a brain dead stumbling
 
flesh eater, eating my own flesh. Inside my own head, 
I fall down and die because nobody can live inside this
upside down drugged limbo land forever. 
On the brink of death, I visualize sadistic vivisection.
 
I become increasingly tortured, dead and invisible.
I imagine emaciated morticians
vomiting on my corpse,
unable to be contained,

unable to hold in the bloody water. 
Unable to swim all the way through
this mortuary cabinet sprawled
from state to state,

from sea to shining sea.
Death under unnatural fluorescents,
spreading viral flora and fauna
and amber waves of blood  
and more and more deaths ignored. 

Model Faces on a Stick   (Juliet Cook & Darryl Shupe)

Rickety rides
flinging models to their death all for the good deal
of 3 tickets per whirl.

In the next room, Dick Dick Dick Goose honking 
as the latest model crawls 
inside her tiny cage. 

Clucking choking
chicken models kick the saw
dust into the air filling it with
poison cockerel piss.

All you can eat
but the models have to dance first.
Rip off their clothing, rip off their skin
and dance like their lives depend on it.

6 bucks for a dill dog.


Model Pony Rides  (Juliet Cook & Darryl Shupe)

Sad little ponygirl models
with heads held down
in depression. 

It is not up
to them to know
who will ride them next. 

They get hooked and are craving
the style of a carousel horse.
A beautiful ride filled with a lovely lineup
of colorful animals that were never alive.
Prettier than real life.

This broken pony ride
is a circle of girls who used to be 
alive, might still be sort of.

Their bodies are mostly set pieces.
Their bodies are mostly props.
Riding crops on top
the almost dead. 

A Calliope Filled With Model Organs (Juliet Cook & Darryl Shupe)

	Oh painted vile in lurid hue
	The snarling horse that waits for you

	Its motor whirrs and colours curl
	Inside your head the monsters whirl

The new screaming tune of this hideous carousel
 sends the zebras running
 from the hunting lions.


 They used to move in an ongoing circle shape,
 going only up and down but now....

	A hen that's fierce
	And painted blue
	With red eyes
	Wants to swallow you

Shrieks of utter terror froth forth from
the children in line. They are about to be stomped 
into replacement parts for the carousel horses.

	Their tiny hands
	Their tiny feet
	Such little hearts
	To miss a beat
	
This model child's head needs a horn
to turn it into a bloody unicorn.

	In sucked out


(lines in Italics are from the Siouxsie and the Banshees song Carousel, from the album Peepshow)




Bios: 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 "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. 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.

Cook's tiny independent press, Blood Pudding Press, sometimes publishes hand-designed poetry chapbooks and sometimes creates other art.

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

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Darryl Shupe is new to poetry (even though he's middle aged) and enjoys collaborating with his partner. In his spare time he likes to work on cars because as he says, "how else does one come up with new swear words?"