Bebe Cook

Bebe

                      Marrow
                                                        by Bebe Cook
                                              for Justin


If we undress ourselves, there are infinite possibilities.
I say remove your mark of society, take off your coat,
shirt and tie. Beneath skin's cast of opaqueness
there is sinew and blood. In the amphitheater of the bone, actors wait for a casting call. I saw it once being sucked through a metal straw from the tip of the curve, above the hallow where hip meets spine. The iliac crest of a child.
It is unremarkable in a specimen tube outside the body; simply a fatty red liquid—at a glance—no different than blood.
It is creation. It makes no difference if you are boy or girl, or if your jeans are frayed. It loves life. It doesn't care about
the color of your epithelium sack, if you bow your head in prayer, or where your bones rest tonight. Perhaps this soft tissue inside the hollow of our bones is where we reside.

       (previously published by Autumn Sky Poetry-June2008)

 

feather

 

                                   Red Planet

                                                                        by Bebe Cook


Tonight the clouds are lined in red
as if—heaven and hell—switched places.
I fight the urge to pull over; photograph
the apocalyptic sky. The need to record is strong.
Clouds roll to reveal flamed underbellies
covered in dust. I know it's an effect
of the setting sun, cloud densities,
a temperature inversion—reminiscent of Heinlein
as an asteroid hurtles towards the Red Planet.
Iron oxide in the soil colored my youth, washed
by rain and wind into shallow ground water that fed
the spring, turned my hair copper penny. Mopping
never did much but turn it into a thin film of pink noise,
a hazy filter, anything more required a straw broom.
Red clung to our uniforms of cutoff jeans and Daddy's
cast off white undershirts; discards he had worn daily
under olive drab fatigues. We would snatch them
from the garbage can or the rag bin. Inhale his scent
while planes took him to places he was not allowed
to speak out loud.

Bio

Bebe Cook is a native Texan and comes from a southern U.S. oral tradition of story telling. She believes poetry is an opportunity to create a bridge; a chance to invite the reader to share a few minutes, to get acquainted and loves that every time a poem is read it is transformed by the intent of the writer and the experiences of the reader into something new. She has placed in local and national poetry contests and continues to write poetry to record her own rooms and moments in order to bring that tradition to the page. Her work has appeared in Flutter Poetry Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, Six Little Things and The Cartier Street Review and Touch: The Journal of Healing, San Pedro River Review, Red River Review and Press 1. She served as a preliminary judge for the The Bridge: Homelessness Hurts Poetry Contest. Her first chapbook An Insatiable Desire for Deja'Vu was published by Flutter Press. She is proud to be a wife to her husband Michael of 27years and mother to her 19 year old daughter, Rachael. She enriches her writing with the diversity of gardening, photography, and working as an environmental scientist.

Links to on-line published works can be found on her blog The Art of Breathing (www.breathingarts.blogspot.com)