week of June 27 - July 3, 2005

Juliet Cook and Mark Murphy

BECOME A POET OF THE WEEK
click. here.for. submission .guidelines

Seemly Enter the room with a shiny lap dog trotting behind well-lotioned heels. With a ruffled floral print nightgown. We serve freshly-squeezed juice and fluffy pancakes. No dried-up fruit. No poppy seeds stuck between teeth. We hope you perused the list of appropriate topics. We serve freshly-squeezed juice and floral print pancakes to shiny lap dogs. Enter the room fluffy. Perfectly poised in the middle, a round pat of butter appears as if from a dollhouse-sized scoop. We hope you perused the well-lotioned fruit. We hope you exude politesse when you enter the room, trotting behind a shiny scoop, smelling sweet, serving a round of appropriate topics. Please appropriately pat fresh, ruffled lap dogs. Please don't leave a crumb, a stain, a snippet of unapproved fluffy. No stray dogs. No dried-up heels. We hope you exude shiny poise, perfect teeth. We hope you squeezed juicy poppies, served fresh from a dollhouse-sized gown. Smelling sweet from appropriate topics, we serve floral print stuck between teeth. We serve please no please no please no butter-stained snippet of unapproved print. Poppy seeds exude politesse when you appear in the middle of a fluffy pancake. Boy/Girl Order Girls, we start off with a fairy tale. Picture Snow White in the glass coffin. If you were dead, our products could transform you into a corpse fit for a prince. Polished-apple red stain would linger on your cheeks as the witch's skin grows green because she has wrinkles, frown-lines, dark circles. In contrast, accept this powder-sugared donut as a prop. Girls, we have a tendency to get stale if nobody bites. The boys are being primed in the next room. Salivating over squeezed tubes, thick frosting, a warmed-up sandwich minus the crusts. You loved your crusts cut off when you were a child. You smiled at smooth, white bread and plastic utensils. A sweet dollhouse scene. But Mother doesn't trim your nails anymore and we've seen your rough edges. Dirty underneath. Like witch fingernails, like claws. The declawed kitty gets the heavy petting. You don't want to be a sick cat, spitting your hairballs in public. Just smile and purr; hide the unpleasantries in your purse. Keep your growing pains a secret, a pretty riddle in a little pink pouch. Sweet pussies- when the boys come back, rub against their knees; see how long before they gather a handful of your hair like it's a leash. Even if it hurts, hide the blood. Discard those horror stories you may have heard. Those were told by the ugly girls. Underneath the Shells It feels like my head was balanced precariously in an egg holder and you cracked it, but didn't stay to eat. Now I can't stop leaking. I can't stop dreaming I'm a trained tiger, leaping through flaming hoops to find something I lost. I awake with my hair on fire. It feels like I can't put it out unless I slice off the top of my head, let what's inside slide into a buttered-up pan. I can pretend to be sunny side up when I'm sizzling. I can pretend to be watching TV when I'm reading my palms. Another lifeline breaks off. I predict my reincarnation as a Faberge egg- glittery surface, but I'll break your teeth if you try to bite any deeper.

The Untrodden Snow A girl in the pub thinks I'm a poet. She asks me what I do. I tell her I notice things, like her mouth, its thick lips. She says it isn't good enough and wants to know what poets do. She has her own ideas· “Mainly they live in lofts, eat baked beans straight from the tin, drink a lot and can be seen, more often than not, walking in town parks.” She says it's all part of their job. Last night I was sober, walked home through the park, didn't see any poets there, didn't see anybody, just some snow drifting this way and that and a dog barking at a tree. When I got home, the whole street was in darkness. The snow was all mine. It felt good thinking about the girl in the pub. How pretty she was. Her big brown eyes. Her mouth when she smiled. Her laugh when she said: “I think poets are supposed to write poetry.”