Trigger Loving Blob

The Blob scared me when I was a little girl.

I would scream inside my own head
and then mentally hurl The Blob until it broke
through a window and entered the house across the street.

Was it my fault if it grabbed someone there?
Was it my fault for not screaming out loud
to let them know The Blob was coming?

I waited for it to slink its gelatinous slime covered,
menstrual blood colored globular shape
back towards me. I wondered who else was stuck inside

that Blob’s body, silently screaming, but trying
to work their way out with scissors, crayon,
colored pencils and their own words before they melted

into another pointless misshapen warning sign
that resembled a life sized doll injection
mold shrinking smaller and smaller and

The Blob will outweigh our existence unless we agree to dissolve.

By Juliet Cook

(The title of this poem came from Kelle Grace Gaddis and the poem’s content was partly inspired by poetic conversation she and I had about trigger warnings. Thank you kindly to Kelle for her creative inspiration.)

Biography:

Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, including Arsenic Lobster, DIAGRAM, Diode, FLAPPERHOUSE, Menacing Hedge and Reality Beach. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including POISONOUS BEAUTYSKULL LOLLIPOP (Grey Book Press, 2013), RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaboration with Robert Cole called MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), and a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), with two more forthcoming. 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 August 2016. Find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.