“The Second to Last Hookup”: a Poem by Cathy Cook

Raven Chronicles Literary Press nominated 6 poems & prose works for the 2019 Pushcart Prize, XLIV Edition. This is one of the nominated pieces:

The Second to Last Hookup

His body was the blanket
I strangled myself with
in my sadness, in my own
sorrow. His hands were
the rope I strangled myself
with in his bed in my own
sorrow. The names he called
me, that I asked for, the stones
I piled on my own grave. 

The slap across my face, I didn’t
ask for. Broke something open
in me. Something unholy
about his body in my body
about the dark pits we’ve
made of ourselves and the flesh
we fill it with. Something unholy
about fucking through tears.
His body was the blanket
I smothered myself with.

 –Cathy Cook

Cathy Cook has been published in The Chaffey Review, 3Elements Literary Review, and in three editions of Conceptions Southwest. Her focus is on writing about bodies, especially her own, and exploring the wonder in the everyday, especially domestic existence. For the last two years, she has performed slam poetry in Las Cruces, New Mexico and enviorons, which has made her poetry more visceral and more politically engaged.

Published in Raven Chronicles Last Call, Vol. 26, 2018.