Two Poems
Purple
Slumped on a stack of black
cardigans that have slipped from your
sinking shoulders, you don't have time to sip.
You gulp. You semi-circle
a kiss-shape on the rim.
You stain white sheets
with florid curlicues, excessive flourishes, eccentric queries
about the color of your blood.
You want to flow purple.
You want to drown in dark-mouthed flowers' ruinous juices.
You want me to pour faster.
I collect your fragile teacups;
scan the handles for the whorls
of your fingertips. Your tenuous grip. Your
jutting blades. You don't have time to sip.
Steaming syllables float from your sultry throat,
but you want to drown. You want me to
pour faster. You want me. You don't
have time. How dare you tempt me
with your dark lips, your wilted violets.
How dare you taunt me with your bloody wrists;
bruise me with your self-consumptive fingertips.
Purple resonates until it deteriorates
into a smear of melodramatic lipstick.
Confection
Lemon pound cake is so heavy.
She is a petrified slab. A thinly-iced temptation
toward consumption. Hacking up albuminous clots until
knotty strands entangle the glottis. A mangled lullaby-
the skein of baby blue yarn unspools from under her tongue.
Dreamy depressor abrasive with granules.
Feverish gleam of needles unblurs
into sticky tines, hollow basins. Slow motion stirring.
Gelatinous egg whites stiffen. Gold-tipped lacy peaks
that always collapse beneath her hands. Swathes of mucus always ooze
from slugs nestled inside her pastel cupcake papers.
Red Velvet cake is so messy.
Will she ever be done testing the pale underside
of her wrist? Crimson wisps strain to escape
as she struggles to grip slippery gobs of buttercream, silver flecks,
raw eggs' exposed yolks tinged red. She cannot
whisk it away. The chilling metallic implements.
The stained plastic measuring spoons hanging limply
from sodden string. A rusty sieve damp with congealed rubies
and tiny marmoreal shards. A steely cold mixing bowl distorts
her powdered face. She is a wan and waning moon,
marooned. She wields a misshapen pastry tube;
squeezes out pasty roses onto her sunken cheeks.
A shiny knife winks at her. It wants her-
a frosted slice. Gaping and glazed with coagulum.
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Juliet Cook has accrued various publication credits and maintains an online journal at www.xanga.com/CandyDishDoom. She is currently at work on a new chapbook-- Horrific Confection. She can be contacted via JulietX@Bust.com. More of her poems can be read online right now in Wicked Alice and Sein Und Werden.
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