[CN: mention of rape/assault]

Ravenous Bird Brain

He thinks you’re a rape magnet,
a strangled portal for revenge,
but you aren’t. Really you are
a ruptured dome filled with crows.

A dream moving through a book
held by a local pagan,
in which every bookmark can fly
and bite the lines of what tried to kill it.

If he thought he could ban us for life,
wait until he sees all the pages under his bed
at night, crawling up the ceiling and then
dive bombing his ears.

Revising his neckline
into a pathogenic birdbath.
The only real way to sleep. Do you believe
rainbows come from atlas? So do stars

but stars are dead. So is God.
What sort of constellation
will forgive him or form a concentric shape
that rains down upon men?

Continue reading “3 Poems by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain” →