Poems Niederngasse

Rebecca Cook
Testimony

When they put me on the stand
I told them that I've been using
my third finger ever since I was eleven
and when they asked me about vegetables
and candles I just laughed at that and told
them that me and a good book under
the covers is enough anytime.  I make
a little tent under there and my smell
is strong and sweet and I wet my finger
with my own spit and everything is slippery
and subtle like a whore behind a door moaning
or the shadow of lovers moving across the wall
at night when you can't sleep and the air is thick
and all you can think of is your own aloneness
and your need to fulfill yourself
and own what is most totally yours,
your hand moving, your legs trembling,
your ass tightening up with the moment
when your breath comes fast, you can't stop it,
and then it's just you and the night and no one else
and that's okay I said to the judge, but she couldn't hear me then,
her hands had sneaked under her robe of their own accord and I
could see from the look in her eyes that I was absolved.



Rebecca Cook lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee where she writes poetry and prose. She teaches composition and humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and she is president of the Chattanooga Writers Guild.  - Has published poetry and prose in numerous literary journals and magazines including Longshot Magazine, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Plainsongs, Southern Humanities Review, The Comstock Review, Northwest Review, Old Red Kimono, The Adirondack Review, and America Magazine. She has new work in, or forthcoming in, Northwest Review, The Baltimore Review, Slow Trains, and The Comstock Review. - Trying to write a novel, more stories, more poems, more everything else. She loves referring to herself in the third person. When she gets bored, she watches movies or googles herself.   Website: godlikepoet/  email: R.Cook
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