Juliet Cook

Pig Trough as Concept

In this series I am floating face-down
in a large steel vat of tapioca pudding.

This vat is akin to an industrial-sized pig trough.
This vat makes me feel as if I want to prick my fingertips

until they bleed all over the scalloped edges
of silver foil cupcake papers, except instead of being
made out of silver foil, these cupcake papers are molded
out of heavy duty steel. I guess they are only cupcake papers
conceptually. I guess prick is too weak a word.

Another pig-like concept has to do with snorting and wallowing
and rooting around in dirty mud, except instead of being
dirty mud, it’s cake frosting. If I gave you a new naked
picture of myself, would you Photoshop me into a cake?

You can think about gluttony, poor impulse control, self-
perpetuating cycles of doll flesh. I’ll think about my own
flesh as a blemished mess that needs to be smoothed all over
with thick icing. Cover suspicious moles with candied rosettes.

You can think about the ways a glass-topped coffee table might be used
as a prop in kinky porno. Did you think about me bleeding and licking
cake frosting? Would you believe I didn’t even know I was pregnant
until my water broke, the glass broke, my flesh spoke a sticky sweet
waterfall of bloody shards and cake frosting clotted on the crown.

This would be perfect for my author photo.
Screw me here. No, I meant with metal screws.

Prick is too weak a word to penetrate my new breed
of sticky. When you’re Photoshopping me,

can you make the cake flowers look lonely and carnivorous
at the same time? Can you make the pink flowers grunt
voraciously or does that sound like I’m trying to live vicariously?
I want them to bite back, force-feed themselves back
inside my cake-decorated womb concept.

Juliet Cook is a poet and the editor of Blood Pudding Press. Find out more about her exploits and latest projects at www.JulietCook.weebly.com