Juliet Cook

Dummy

It feels like an internal ventriloquist
in which the dummy lives inside
your mind,
repeatedly trying to tell you
you're nothing special, barely alive,
you might as well be dead.

Are you talking to yourself
again or did something else invade
your brain, aiming to convince you
that you're not really you anymore?
Whoever you are, 
you are no longer worthy of speaking
for yourself

in this interconnected conglomerate,
which seems to keep fusing more closely
together in increasingly confused fashion
disasters. You're too old, you're too fat,
you're too broken, you're too hollow.
You're too much, you're not enough.

Stuck in your head, meaningless
pull string. Are you a small part
of a bad dream or a clichéd horror film
scene or an unending mental cold storm
which makes your leaky faucet drip faster
and faster and then suddenly freeze?

 

Damage Control/Internal Doll House

Stuck inside an abandoned hybrid car
set on fire and I can't drive.  I can't remember
who started this or when or how or why
but for years I've felt anxious inside vehicles
on busy roads or crowded parking lots.

I'm terrible at math but I add and subtract myself
into intermingling elements painted different hues
as if math is another aspect of science and art. I combine
dreams with reality, trying to determine which
combine derby is more likely to cut off a limb.

Whether this is a garbage heap or a personal gem
is open to interpretation by myself. I think
I'm sometimes interchangeable and then change
my own mind. I might erratically alternate 
between ghosts and monsters
and wrap them together inside

a stale cereal box that nobody wants
to pour out or eat. High sugar intake sings
in my glittery head space like a webbed cluttered bed
or misshapen closet filled with empty trick or treat bags
and blood dripping down the wall until it dries out
and I have to rewrite it again within this
interrogation chamber of cold weather.

From mental monsoon to mental slaughterhouse
with all the blood covered up by white snow
which other people see as pretty until it melts down
and shows the damaged surface underneath.
An overloaded bookcase, books with fractured covers,
broken lines which still mean something to me, but what

if I'm the only one who knows what these lines mean?
I'll collapse in on myself until I'm gone
and then they can cut off my doll heads
and throw them away or turn them in
to whatever they want me to be.

 

Is This Poem Real?

Ongoing drip drip dripping
blood and then you dry out.
From overflowing to plain old
dry. Smoldering, berating yourself
into dust then invisibility.

Even though you've felt somewhat
invisible for years, it keeps getting worse.
Your weirdo dance moves turn into old people
(get away from me) dance moves. You don't feel
old, but maybe you're outdated and behind

the times, which involve AI and photos more than words
and how do you know if the photos are real
and how do you know if the art is real
and how do you know if anyone is real
anymore or how anyone really feels?

Juliet Cook doesn't fit inside an Easy-Bake Oven and rarely cooks. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently including red flames burning out (Grey Book Press, 2023), Contorted Doom Conveyor (Gutter Snob Books, 2023), Your Mouth is Moving Backwards (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2023), REVOLTING (Cul-de-sac of Blood, 2024), and Blue Stingers Instead of Wings (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025). You can find out more at https://julietcook.weebly.com/.