The New World Doll Dresser

The world seems so scary but really it’s
scratching our eyes out in order to start
a new current. Electricity will replace
every color. Pupils will either expand
or explode. Replacement therapy is outdated.
It is time to get rid of everyone.

Start a new species
made of maggots and lace.
Grime grows into grunge grows into colorful
tentacles screaming and singing
as they fly and filter the sky with bulbs
that can be washed in your household dishwasher
until it is covered with red jelly.

I’m talking red jelly all over the place.
Shut up! I’m talking!
Red jelly dripping
out of my mouth, my eyes, my lungs.
Filthy filters, triggers, hosts.

Take me into the basement and use that voice on me.
Magnetize me until the mold goes away.
Sub-layers for the submissive who never wanted
a dominant and really just wanted a doll
with an evil side to open their door
on a night out on the town. To stab
that door open, leaving symmetrical shards
of glass and rubber cement.

And Hollyhock dolls with prisms in their eyes
and corpses hiding under their dresses
until the dresses rot away.
After all, every doll dies,
but first they sacrifice a human.
Sometimes by stabbing, sometimes by burning,
sometimes by ripping off a human head
to replace their own. Throwing the human body in a trash bag
like some giant drooled on dog toy.

 

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.

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.

Cover Photo Credit: Kylie Supski