A Red Envelope

by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain

Sometimes I ignore reality.
Sometimes I exaggerate reality.
Unsteady lines break into
the un-convenient store and drink
all the 2 percent milk until
a red envelope slides down
an internal window.

A fractured time capsule
starts to re-grow,
burst forth, break through.
The lights in the waiting room
flicker and grow appendages
because we are all waiting
to get our hands on something.

The operating room is filled
with tentacles holding onto an invisible
center for dear life. A sign
of invented identity next to
a dangling field of vision
that is almost ready to emerge.

Its overt name is boring but
its hidden name is infinite.
A structure underneath the floor
of a haunted house that used to
belong to my childhood home
where a missionary once fell

in love with a locket worn around
a transubstantiated neck attached to
a defenestrated head. The hair
was wear the power unfurled
Medusa’s agenda. Run
into her light and your hair will
naturally dye itself red.

Your eyes will widen,
expand a chalkboard, turn the chalk
into snakes in charge of the lesson plan,
fill every classroom with living, hissing mouths
that speak for themselves supernaturally.

 

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About the Authors

Juliet Cook is brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at JulietCook.weebly.com.

j/j hastain is a collaborator, writer and maker of things. j/j performs ceremonial gore. Chasing and courting the animate and potentially enlivening decay that exists between seer and singer, j/j hopes to make the god/dess of stone moan and nod deeply through the waxing and waning seasons of the moon.

Post Image

NASA/JPL-Caltech: Natal Microcosm, 2003