“Drenched Mold” is one of two spectacularly squishy poems by Juliet Cook & Michael Bernstein from our Fall 2017 issue.

{ X }

A SLIME DISPENSER THAT WON’T STOP shooting it out
of order, out of order, out of clichéd slots.

I’m either screaming or I’m crying
or I’m hideously mean.
I’m a female-shaped gumball machine.

You know you can’t wait
to break me open
or throw me out the window.

I turn myself into
a ripped out placenta in the trunk
of the car. I can’t even drive.

So I’m not the one who crashed
my own slot machine and smashed you.

I’m either cheating or I’m lying,
eyeless and unseen.
An arachnid, fat on the afterbirth
of gold rush dreams.

You can’t wait to off me before my time:
a 50 ton space phallus, spreading its slime.

An entourage of pill dispensers poured inside
broken flower pots. Hubris, rat poison,
3 left gloves.

A brillo pad will shape them all
into something to snort
to cast the heavy hex down,
connect the slime balls with the cat hair.

With the rat tails, with the bat, with the anti-
establishment non-jello mold,
with the tall ships, the dead letters, the dittos
marching into crippling immediacies,
bleached and unyielding.

{ X }

JULIET  COOK is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid 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 www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

MICHAEL BERNSTEIN is an American writer and musician. His first proper collection of poems, this is an x-ray, was published by Writing Knights in 2017. He currently lives in Wisconsin.