❀ Juliet Cook
        
✾ seamstress of the belly of the beast

        Prickly thorns may be an intricate latticework
        wrapped sweetly around a secret luminaria. 
        Glowing frog throat, swelling bird egg, lilting
        warbler feathers alight. I don’t want to snuff it,
        but sometimes it burns my tongue.  

        A tiny blue heron floats in hot buttered rum,
        then throbs into blue-black Hieronymus Bosch scene.
        From delicate origami nestling to flaming paper wings, 
        veiny beak.  Oily clots of dark paint bleed
        through pores and test my seams.

        Let me rip open a little. Maybe I can stitch myself  
        together in new ways. Let me rip open all the way.
        I’ll entrust a certain someone with my collection
        of gleaming needles and threads. My desire to find out
        where he hides his knots.
        
        
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