anti-mold momentum (by j/j hastain and Juliet Cook)

Juliet Cook and j/j hastain

 

anti-mold momentum

The phantom tries to mold me
into amber embryos
and as I gather pictures
along
the brink I break
cigarettes
little binkies
in a mouth unfinished

Unfinished or not
the mold won’t work
I’ll scream and break
glass
and then drink
what I broke out of.
It’s been done before
chew the contents

then chew the form
as a way of making
both more content. Mysterious
risks. Glass grows stronger
and we pour our sea salt
into the glass cabinet.
Will it melt or crack or
break another mold

release the latest specimen
racy and with crisp
momentum. A silo
a spillway being swallowed
in sallow halos will lead
towards self-created flying things.
It doesn’t matter how far down
you throw me.

Even if I break again and again
I will re-grow, re-birth,
create
new shapes
new directions.
Redefine this fodder.
Fold me out of the line,
not into it.

* * * * *

 

j/j hastain is a queer, mystic, seer, singer, photographer, lover, priest/ess, and writer. As artist and activist of the audible, j/j is the author of several cross-genre books and enjoys ceremonial performances in an ongoing project regarding gender, shamanism, eros and embodiments. That project is called: you make yourself your own tilted stage.  j/j is the author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), anti-memoir a vigorous (Black Coffee Press/ Eight Ball Press), Secret Letters (Crisis Chronicles Press) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe and Tarpaulin Sky. j/j has been a guest lecturer at Naropa University, University of Colorado and University of Denver.

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver and purple explosions.  Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications, most recently including Arsenic Lobster, Menacing Hedge, Mojave River Review, and Tarpaulin Sky. She is the author of more than thirteen published poetry chapbooks, most recently including FONDANT PIG ANGST (Slash Pine Press), Tongue Like a Stinger (Wheelhouse), POST-STROKE (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5), Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press), POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press) and RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press). A new collaborative poetry chapbook created by Juliet Cook and Robert Cole, MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. Juliet’s first full-length poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX. In addition to her own writing, Juliet is the editor/publisher of Blood Pudding Press (print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (online). You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

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Goop (by j/j hastain and Juliet Cook)

Juliet Cook and j/j hastain

 

Goop

Again I awoke from this dream.

You were grossed out
by my words
then suddenly changed
your mind. You wanted to take
a chance,
to lie
down
surrounded
by shit.

You wanted to get stuck
in it,
your hair
ripped out,
watch it grow

wet soil
transplants. Hair a navigational
comrade. The words
were boulders
mossy pits, wounds
the words were mutating
crows, cawing through
every socket,
every crawlspace

with new sounds
the words were extensions
the place where the bridge is
beginning
to separate
the loam foams
and spurts out
a tiny volcano

flipped so the cone tip
is at the bottom. It is leaking. Honey,
lay down here beside me. I think
it is time to dream again.

 

* * * * *

 

j/j hastain is a queer, mystic, seer, singer, photographer, lover, priest/ess, and writer. As artist and activist of the audible, j/j is the author of several cross-genre books and enjoys ceremonial performances in an ongoing project regarding gender, shamanism, eros and embodiments. That project is called: you make yourself your own tilted stage.  j/j is the author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), anti-memoir a vigorous (Black Coffee Press/ Eight Ball Press) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe and Tarpaulin Sky. j/j has been a guest lecturer at Naropa University, University of Colorado and University of Denver.

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver and purple explosions.  Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications, most recently including Arsenic Lobster, Menacing Hedge, Mojave River Review, and Tarpaulin Sky. She is the author of more than thirteen published poetry chapbooks, most recently including FONDANT PIG ANGST (Slash Pine Press), Tongue Like a Stinger (Wheelhouse), POST-STROKE (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5), Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press), and POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press). A new collaborative poetry chapbook created by Juliet Cook and Robert Cole, MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. Juliet’s first full-length poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX. In addition to her own writing, Juliet is the editor/publisher of Blood Pudding Press (print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (online). You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

A Few of the Motives (by Juliet Cook)

Juliet Cook at Snoetry 4 — photo by JC

A Few of the Motives

Perhaps you’ve had enough
of the spiders & dolls,
of the egg sacs & attics
with their vaguely supernatural
airs.  Whatever are the girls doing there
with their senseless sashays, with their scentless sachets,
with their unfinished hems of lavender dresses drawn out until threadbare.

Are they “not quite right”?

Are they paranormal, abnormal,
abducted, abandoned, trapped
inside their own lolling heads?

Are they the lax debris
of disambiguation gone wrong?

Are they partially gone,
fondled then drained
prey from an old-fashioned vampire movie?

(Black & white swoons into gray snow
as one of them bleeds herself
to relive that sharp kiss,
its fantastical collapse…)

Are they empty contraptions, outer casings, prettily painted shells
for ghosts?  Are they already dead?

(In the corner, two of them have given up
pricking themselves with needles.
Now they are sewing their fingers together.
Attached at the tips and fluttering
like pale moths in a peculiar coupling…)

Sometimes being ugly and living alone are enough
to convince people one is possessed.
Perhapps their lazy eyes and flesh-tone moles
are the culprits in this slow downfall.

(Undercover of ruffled lace,
she saws at her arm with a butter knife…)

Perhaps they are birdbrained
and hibernating.  Perhaps all their idling
in parlor chairs is because they are hiding
a new brood of addled eggs.

Under their skirts, poised upon plush
purple stripes of feather-stuffed cushions,
a soft clucking emerges.

Pink-glossed harelips part.

(She slips something illicit under her tongue;
she forgets something…)




“A Few of the Motives” (c) 2008 by Juliet Cook from Planchette (Blood Pudding Press).  Click here to order it.

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver and purple explosions.  Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications, most recently including Arsenic Lobster, Menacing Hedge, Mojave River Review, and Tarpaulin Sky. She is the author of more than thirteen published poetry chapbooks, most recently including FONDANT PIG ANGST (Slash Pine Press), Tongue Like a Stinger (Wheelhouse), POST-STROKE (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5), Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press), and POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press). A new collaborative poetry chapbook created by Juliet Cook and Robert Cole, MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2014. Juliet’s first full-length poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX. In addition to her own writing, Juliet is the editor/publisher of Blood Pudding Press (print) and Thirteen Myna Birds (online). You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.