New! Another one of my FLESH WORLD poems in OyeDrum

"In your dreams, cornfields with tiny ears
won’t listen to your screams."

from one of my FLESH WORLD poems, appearing today within OyeDrum Magazine

read more here - https://oyedrum.com/flesh-world-by-juliet-cook-poetry/

New! Two of my poems appear in the new issue of Misfit Magazine! - "Some people want to remove your eyes" and one of my FLESH WORLD poems...

I feel pretty strongly about these two poems of mine that appear in the new Issue No. 32, Spring 2021 of Misfit Magazine!

Below is a link to my two poems - "Some people want to remove your eyes" and one of my FLESH WORLD poems (from a small series).

I hope a few people read them. 💜 I've been feeling kind of invisible lately (and having a hard time trusting other people). 

However, even if hardly anyone reads them, I am still proud of them for my own reasons.

http://misfitmagazine.net/archive/No-32/cook.html

A NEW Review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook "i saw god cooking children / paint their bones"!

Thank you to Latif Askia Ba for this wonderful review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "i saw god cooking children / paint their bones" by john comptom

"john compton's most recent chapbook, “i saw god cooking children / paint their bones,” produced and published beautifully by Blood Pudding Press, is a testament to love—not the trite and sappy kind, but the kind “rooted in piss and shit” as the Zen saying goes.

Captured in Compton’s (perpetually) turning phrases, peppered by his playful and refreshingly rare diction—catastrophe flowers across these pages, and though they are few, they manage to create an unignorable echo, which rattles furiously in the mind by the end of the collection.

It’s not really my place to read into things, but I’m going to anyway. It seems that the source of this powerful resonance is Compton’s mother, a reoccurring character throughout the book, who (being “plagued / by a psychotic / god”) had a contentious relationship with the poet, and instead of letting this relationship live in a slew of depressing word salads, Compton sets up a sort of dialectic with the pain of being his mother’s “faggot son.”

The poet, rejecting this identity, re-educates us (and corrects his mother) in his sexual vignettes like “fellation” or “the memory of seeing my first uncut penis.”

Even in a poem named “the israeli war,” where you expect an account of pure misery, Compton refuses this from us. Instead, his description is tender: “an explosion of wings.” And so, in this very way, he takes the words and deeds of his mother and bends them around his lines into gentle, ornate lamentations.

Reading “i saw god painting children…” felt like I was eavesdropping on an intimate conversation between a mother and her son, and even if their relationship was marked by suffering, I could still hear the stubborn cadence of love…

or maybe it was just me breathing too loudly. Either way, you can buy this chapbook and other masterly constructed chapbooks at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress

Happy to have started my COVID-19 vaccination process!

I had a rather stressful day yesterday (Wednesday March 24) for various reasons, but on the definite plus side, I feel extremely lucky and grateful that I was able to get my first shot of the COVID-19 vaccination Wednesday afternoon!

Last Friday, it became available to my age group (40+) in my state (Ohio) and since I have weird late night hours, I thought that maybe if I started investigating various sources it was available in right after midnight, as soon as Thursday turned into Friday, that I might get lucky. Instead I got stressed out, spending at least 2 hours investigating and encountering nothing in 50 miles from me. Closest I got was putting myself and my boyfriend on a waiting list with one nearby place. In addition to the 50 plus miles away, some of the places I checked out still only listed availability for 50+ years of age.

After that first night of no good luck, I told myself I'd keep on investigating, but would try not to get myself all stressed out and would spend about 45 minutes every night. I wasn't expecting to land a spot my second night, but a little after 2:00 AM that night, I checked out a place that had still said 50+ the night before and now they were listed as 40+ and had various times available Wednesday in a location less than 10 minutes away from me! I couldn't believe my luck and signed up as fast as I could and felt like maybe I was daydreaming.

I had wanted to sign my boyfriend up too, but didn't have all his information in front of me (the numbers on his health insurance/pharmacy insurance etc...), so emailed him to bring those with him the next day. We were going to make one attempt while he was here and if that didn't work, I was going to try it late at night again. But it ended up working, even though we had to sign him up for a slot over an hour away from him. He got his 1st shot Monday; I got my first shot Wednesday.

I was a little nervous (not about the shot itself, but about the unexpected such as side effects that seem to differ from person to person), but I got the shot (Pfizer) at 3:50 PM Wednesday and was fine for about 5 hours. A little after 9:00 PM, my upper arm (right where I got the shot) started feeling sore. It was just a mild to moderate soreness and I could move it around fine. It gradually got a little worse, but already seemed to be getting better by about 3:00 AM. I did lay down for a while, somewhere around 9:30-11:30 PM, because I felt low energy, tired, and drained - but I don't even think that was necessarily because of the vaccine. I think it was because of my stress about the vaccine plus my stress about some other stuff that had effected my sleep schedule the previous night.

I took a few ibuprofens and drank a lot of water (and some orange juice) and my only side effect seemed to be mild to moderately uncomfortable upper arm.

After I had been in bed for a few hours, I woke up and it felt more uncomfortable and closer to high-end moderate.

I got up and took an Ibuprofen then laid back down. It felt pretty bad for an hour or two in bed, almost as if someone had punched me in the arm or something. Before that, the only mildly sore spot was where I had actually gotten the injection, but when I woke up, it was more like the whole top of my arm was sore, almost heading up to my neck. Fortunately that only lasted an hour or two before it started to get better again.

When I got up for the day Thursday, it was somewhat better but still somewhat worse than the night before. In addition to the discomfort, my arm felt kind of stiff and I had trouble extending my arm or holding it up (for example, when applying deodorant). It's better again now though and the arm discomfort was the only side effect I experienced, so all things considered, I think the first shot worked well and pretty easily for me.

Very happy that I have my vaccinating underway.

The NEW March flock of Thirteen Myna Birds has arrived!

 The NEW March flock of Thirteen Myna Birds is HERE! - https://13myna.blogspot.com/

Offering poetry and art by Trina Stolec, Scott Norman Rosenthal, Wayne F Burke, Dustin King, Eileen Murphy, Yash Seyedbagheri, John Grey, Daniel G. Snethen, and S.M. Moore!

"inject that butt with another order of pills - I can’t even tell which lies are true - I must throw a blanket on you, you're so cold in bed - ventilated lungs gasp for air - I take walks in the cemetery where it is quiet - until humans become mass murderers or don’t make it home for a month - I still think they have mad cow disease - You must force yourself into a mailbox and write - my deliciously despicable lair - detached from the moral and cultural climate - Gritty, disturbing, covered in mold - between tattered drapes - She receives and emits her desires to the world around her - on the anniversary of her slaughter - An ink blot, a small country with rivers for borders on my mattress - lead down to a deeper darkness - make footsteps like ghost children - searching for roadkill"

The Rabbits With Red Eyes is one year old!

A year ago this poetry chapbook of mine was coming soon - and now this poetry chapbook of mine is still alive and available, thanks to the wonderful Ethel Zine & Micro-Press!

The Rabbits With Red Eyes by Juliet Cook!

Available via Ethel HERE - https://www.ethelzine.com/shop/the-rabbits-with-red-eyes-by-juliet-cook

Also available via my own Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/792299569/new-the-rabbits-with-red-eyes-by-juliet?ref=shop_home_feat_4

NEW! the Lunch Bucket Brigade #4 (and my poem(s) inside it)!

I was delighted to receive copies of the Lunch Bucket Brigade #4 in the mail today! Here's an image of the cover AND one of my three FLESH WORLD poems that appear inside it.

Thank you very much to poet/editor Dan Denton!

I look forward to reading all the other poems in this issue!

You can acquire your own copy (or other issues of the Lunch Bucket Brigade or chapbooks) for only $5 HERE - https://noduckstudios.com/store

NEW! The Lunch Bucket Brigade Zine #4 (with three of my new FLESH WORLD poems inside it)!

Delighted to have 3 of my new FLESH WORLD poems inside The Lunch Bucket Brigade Zine #4, alongside poems by Sara Sarna, Sophia Ashley, Nnadi Samuel, Michael Grover, and John Dorsey!

Thank you very much to poet/editor Dan Denton.

You can get a copy for only $5 via the link below (and you can also get other Lunch Bucket Brigade Zines 1-3 and other chapbooks).

https://noduckstudios.com/store/lunch-bucket-brigade-zine-4

NEW! A collaborative poem by Martin Willitts Jr and me appears in Pinky Thinker Press Issue No. 2

Excited to share that Martin Willitts Jr. and I have a collaborative poem, "My Computer is Plotting Against Me", surrounded by all sorts of other interesting art and writing in Pinky Thinker Press, Issue No. 2!

(Our poem appears on page 6. )

"Some people take photos of toilet bowls
before flushing the debris and call that found poetry.
I cut off my cat hair and rabbit tail, toss it
in the next bowl and call it dessert.
A recipe for disaster might be a gourmet chef

in the next life..."

read more HERE - https://www.mignolo.art/ptp

***

P.S. For anyone who hasn't looked at Pinky Thinker yet, one thing that really makes this new magazine stand out uniquely is that it includes all kinds of artsy dance choreography and Screendances. It offers dance art alongside visual art, collage art, and word art (poetry, stories, screenplays). A big part of the reason I sent poetry to this publication was because I don't think I've ever been in a magazine that has poetry appearing right next to contemporary dance performance art and I thought that was really cool. I'm not a great dancer, but I love artsy dance choreography and see/feel it as another form of creative/poetic expression that can go hand in hand with poetry and so I am delighted that Pinky Thinker is exploring this!

a bad dream on the 5 year anniversary of my dog's death

Uncomfortable dream last night in which my pet dog was possibly approaching the end of its life. The dog basically looked like bones. Literal bones, like if you're walking through a forest and see bones from a dead animal. The difference was all the dog's bones were connected with each other, so it had a head, a body, legs and feet, and even a tail - but no skin or tongue or eyes. But it was alive. But it was in bad shape.

Someone said they could fix it - some woman who acted like an expert who knew what she was talking about. So we were in a dark old basement and my dog was on a table that resembled a table at a veterinary office. The woman who had said she could fix him was cutting into parts of his bone in a way that was supposed to somehow help whatever his issue was - but then she accidentally broke part of one of his bones - and part of me knew he couldn't be fixed or saved after that.

But he was still alive, so what were we supposed to do? She kept cutting and I was worried he was going to break even more, fall apart, and be in terrible pain. I asked her, "Can he hear me?" She said yes, so I was whispering into the dog's ear bones and the holes where his eyes had been and crying until I woke myself up.