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The Power
I’ve noticed more and more of late
My power to infuriate
Is stronger than it’s ever been.
I exercise it even when
I try to be both dull and sweet
And humble, willing, incomplete.
Infuriation fills the air;
I feel it in each icy stare,
The phone that doesn’t ring, the blare
Of constant mediocrity—
The lack of love, the misery.
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Color Songs
Should an arpeggio take flight
It shows you green in minor tones—
A small flute made of malachite
One sprightly saint’s transmuted bones.
How rich the sound that orange makes!
So clear, and unequivocal.
The simple path to Heaven’s gates
Lies in each marigold’s bright ball.
As ochre slants the autumn sun,
Momentum carries you along:
The ancient path that orb’s begun,
The echo of a brassy gong.
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Invisibility
She used to think her sole and starring role
Was set within a sparkling social life
Gadding about from one new watering hole
To others, and so many of them rife
With famous folk, who’d often sink a knife
Into the next’s one’s bright ballooning talk.
She lived an arty and ambitious life
Exceeding pace, and walked the fastest walk,
Until her natal stars began to balk,
And planetary aspects swayed and bent.
Then, though she’d preen herself each time and stalk
All those on greater, higher planes who went
Floating on gilded feet upon the air,
Arrows rushed past her—she was unseen there.
originally published in Expansive Poetry Online
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Sally Cook is both a poet and a painter of magical realism. Her poems have also appeared in Blue Unicorn, First Things, Chronicles, The Formalist Portal, Light Quarterly, National Review, Pennsylvania Review, TRINACRIA, and other electronic and print journals. A six-time nominee for a Pushcart award, in 2007 Cook was featured poet in The Raintown Review. She has received several awards from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, and her Best American Poetry Challenge-winning poem “As the Underworld Turns” was published in Pool.