When I Used to be a Little Girl

My sisters and I picked bunches of the dead
off the ground and formed a mound,
then carried one of the cats in front
of the cicada mountain
and watched the cat eat our offering.

At least the insects were already dead
and we were children who later grew up,
became our own individual living creatures.

We were not adults with show off child brat brains.
We were not adults who wanted to be in charge of everyone else
even though we didn’t really care about anyone else.

We did not want a leader who would tilt nests upside down,
watch the baby birds fall out
and call himself the boss as they died.

By Juliet Cook

Biography:

Juliet Cook’s poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, including Arsenic Lobster, DIAGRAM, Diode, FLAPPERHOUSE, Hermeneutic Chaos, Menacing Hedge and Reality Beach. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including 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 2016. Find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.