Rebecca Cook

In the Cleft of the Rock I am ensconced I am cottoned-up I am a smooth blue rock. I am hiding in some places where monsters can't see me. It's raining. Perhaps I should clarify perhaps I have come to the world’s end a long valley with nothing in it I am safe, I am beyond God’s reach. Perhaps I should tell you that I am no criminal I am no snitch I am loyal to a fault but I cannot…

Finally Freeing The De Kooning Women Pretty soon it will be forever. The great yellow cranes will lay themselves down beneath the unfinished bridges, the dams will untruss their girdles and flood the valleys below. I've heard it on the news I keep hearing it pretty soon it's going to heat up it's going to rise up pretty soon this sick yolk will devour the white this perpetually-starving mouth will choke on its own viciousness it is not our fault I…

no pride at all death would like me better if I didn't complain so much, if I didn't punch back against every morning pulling itself up over the ridge dragging up the sun; death would like me better except that I'm fat and death does not like fatness; death would maybe love me if I were willing to be quiet, to swallow it all down instead of yelling, instead of acting up, instead of saying fuck you to each fresh wave…

found poems are poems too, Rebecca And because he is not entirely cruel, God said unto the woman-- "Please, little one, take the first pat of butter and the first spoon of jam. Take the finest pair of slippers and the very largest clot of cream. Take up the choicest grasses and the clearest water to keep for yourself. And the dandelions. And the runt of every litter. Take down the farthest star and pop it into your mouth every night.…

found and vicious The poems are not writing themselves they are writing me some deep river in me an electric cord a space heater too close to the tub they are tightening the spring in me the jack in the box held under the pasture pond its hideous face growing slack no more sick surprise no more finder's keepers one potato two potato there were never enough closets to hide in the old shack behind the barn is missing the old…

I should have been writing these last long weeks, but I have not. I found myself exhausted and quite to the point of stopping on the side of the road and just sitting down with my luggage like a worn out refugee fleeing the wars. So much has been going on, for instance--two weeks ago I had a torn retina that had to be repaired which was a surreal adventure to say the least. And also I got James' labs back…

and because i could not stop for death weep the broken line of song the busted cords heaped upon the floor weep the silent birds the blank stare of the night sky weep the open chest empty of its wares this body is done for. upon a slab upon a pyre one might consider the effects of chemicals poured on the effects of electric charge laid on how the long-absent hairs might have risen up with the motion of the moon…

The Pinkening And the girl walks through the green forest the everlastingly verdant mossy undergrowthing the creekbanksswellingness of the place she imprinted upon it. She sinks down into the springy bed of the woodsy floor that lifts her up and sets her atop the branches of the old cherry tree. And oh! the puckering mouth the wind that bounces, the world gone entirely pink the body gone opening and opening, awakening. Here are your wings, here are your pink foam rollers…

"how much energy do you have? how many spoons?" I have joined the Y yet again. I've never been able to make a membership with the Y stick the way I want it to, but as I have been contemplating my own death I thought about what I would regret. Other than the obvious not taking care of my body, not listening to my body, becoming pretty much disabled at this point, I did think that I would miss having not…

So I am an HSP. A Highly Sensitive Person. I have heard this term over the past few months and I thought that it was just another fad,  another way to explain the obvious, but I see now that it is actually a recognized (since the 1990s) personality trait, or rather a set of personality traits that signifies behavior patterns in a person. This should probably not be surprising to me or anyone else who knows me, and when my husband…