Rebecca Cook

this strange apparatus of house Walk backwards to the place where the horses are turning toward you an endless row of velvet napes all waves and luminous browns you had not known before that they were watching taking flight before breakfast their paper wings burnt umber against the sun. The brother has built more doghouses when you weren’t looking it means trouble it means tearing them down it means why'd you stop looking? Of course the horses are broken saddles and…

the construction and care of terrariums The fact is I forget, great swaths of my life, the days the years the decades compress and congeal in a kind of aspic a woman in a globe filled with photographs that stand in as memories I look up through the glass and realize I have always lived in one of my mother's terrariums. Maybe she put me in here and my life is her fault but maybe it's the bipolar maybe it's the…

A House of Water a House of Light If my husband dies before I die I will be alone. And I will stay alone because I yearn   toward aloneness the upright girlness of me yearns for her own rooms and spaces I will erase all traces of who I've been the lonely the extrovert maybe I will get a puppy. I will be alone in the house walking through the house with no one in it but me to maintain…

this pool becomes an ocean this brain is full of glitches matted trees doorstops inside my wrists this brain gallops the length of this body corridors open windows massive doorknobs this giant yellow house these pink roller skates my mother’s twister boards this brain goes for a swim in the pool in the chest the brilliant clean blue god is there get out of the pool god the thunders this pool becomes an ocean this god becomes a kitchen mouse a…

the memory of light look! the stars were here. their black holes, their empty watering places. the memory of light. they swam these dark channels, they gathered up the coals and cast them down to god. their dragon breath, their dragon heads bowed everything burning everything turning redder as each flower of morning pulls the night over its head.

The Stillborn Heart What blister makes its way past here, what trace of salt? Indian burns, my lip downturned inside-out you get a road-dust taste that way you get an empty. We played that game. We rubbed sun oil into our thighs, we dove from the high board. I am misremembering that, too. My memory is fractured,   the hall mirror flung into the front yard-- it has taken its chances there, rain and slog, draught. Nothing new will grow. I…

Outfitted with Angel Wings There was a church under the church under the stones under my granddaddy's pew there was a dark mouth a narrow stairwell a hungry maw. The was a church situated exactly on top of the church I could look up during the prayer and see it hovering a chicken-wire parade float outfitted with Angel wings. There was a church inside the church inside the hearts of the congregation the baptized heads the earnest-in- prayer claspings of hands…

at least leave us this Weep down the closet wall the captain’s keep the ocean’s portal peep hole-- you swing alone there the galley has become so small the tub molding where you lowered your mother into the water is cracking, the dingy washcloths her ancient breasts the antiseptic smells what you can never undo, she swallowed you in the end. She left you an eaten-out shell after the two of us watched her die I think that was our last…

reckoning with the spring In my most recent inventory I found that I cannot wear the new boots, the beautiful things are useless to me. I cannot wear the new blazer, the sleeves are a disaster, the bickering ladies have ruined my flowy black pants the pockets having shrunk up suitable only for finger babies. Here is the blue cardy and here is the pink cardy and here are the eight-thousand eight hundred and twenty-two babies, babies large and babies small…

the bargain I will believe in God again if I can get my body back. So I can touch it. So I can run my fingers down and over the slight teeny swell of my belly that I once found so hideous. So that I can photograph it in every stage of dress and undress so I can see it over and over and over again and bring it to my lips kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss. So I can…