Juliet Cook on Her Poems

In the movie Carrie (inspired by the Stephen King book of the same name), when the main character gets her first period while showering after high school gym class, she has no idea what's happening to her own body, panics, thinks she might be dying. The other women laugh, throw sanitary pads at her, make fun of her. Her mother abuses her and locks her in the closet for turning into a woman. She is belittled and degraded. She is unaware of her own power. Then flash forward to how she uses her powers later. The film shifts from menstrual blood to a bucket of pig's blood raining down to a prom scene slaughterhouse.

Of course that's just one movie. There are others that interpret women's brains as haunted or disturbed, women's bodies as torture devices, women's high heeled shoes as part of the attire to be worn when they're running for their lives. Some people are grossed out by menstrual blood and bodies. Some people fetishize menstrual blood and bodies. Some women's minds and bodies serve as a sign or a source of telekinetic powers, or poltergeists, or witchery, or women turning into non-human animals. Then they might turn into hags.

Women bleed and bleed until the menstrual blood stops, their bodies age, and they speed race closer to death. If you didn't get chased to death and chainsawed or stabbed or bludgeoned or otherwise eviscerated when you were younger, then it won't be long before your body starts eviscerating itself. Then you will die. Then you will only exist in a few other people's memories, perspectives, and (mis)interpretations.

Perhaps my poetry exaggerates these matters, but it's true that the real me not existing anymore is terrifying to me.

I hope that parts of me might still exist in my poetry, even if it tends towards the negative.