READ A POEM
by Juliet Cook
Chicken Corset
I’m sick of being related
to you who want to impregnate
and birth as though that’s the main purpose of life.
I’d rather wear a chicken corset
and watch you watch me jerk around
after you cut off my head.
If it all boils down
to life and death and birthing
offspring and trying your best
to convince them there’s a heaven
and a hell, then I might as well toss my chicken
feed inside a cracked flask
and chug it, attempt to convince myself
that I can create my own
heavenly demise that has nothing
to do with the red leaking out
of my egg. You’re ruining someone else
because you want them to be another you.
I want to pitch myself through
the chicken breeding pen.
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“Chicken Corset” by Juliet Cook from NEO Goddesses. White Stag, 2016. Used by permission of the author.
ABOUT TODAY’S POET
Juliet Cook‘s poetry has appeared in a multitude of magazines. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Cook’s first full-length individual poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX, and her second full-length individual poetry book, Malformed Confetti, is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. Her most recent full-length poetry book, A Red Witch, Every Which Way, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016. In addition to poetry, Cook creates visual art.
WRITE A POEM
Write a poem in the form of a letter from a famous poet that explains something everyone has gotten wrong about a poem or some aspect of his or her work.