THOMAS COOK
WE ALL WANT TO BE HOME
We all want to be sweet girls and hold a lot of birds. We all want
to be good and speak the language the snake cannot understand,
not even in Switzerland, not even named Joyce. We all want the
breeze on a bumper sticker of nice song lyrics, and when you
talk to me it feels like good exercise. We all want the right floor.
In my ribs, there are 100 million very nice dollars, beautiful fish
that appear when you press my flesh and release what I’ve
created. There are beautiful names, some that mean war and
anger, some for computer software. I can’t control those
who volunteer themselves to such service.
When death comes for me, it comes for me in the dark. It comes
from my pocket, and it tells me that it’s always known I wanted to
be home, with wood smoke and the good soap, with fall all over
the world and the surface of the music running over me like
water.
An Editor and Publisher of Tammy since 2009, Thomas Cook has published several chapbooks of poetry and prose. His work has appeared in Bennington Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, New Orleans Review, and Quarterly West among others. He lives in Los Angeles.