j/j hastain & Juliet Cook | Hexagonal Approach to Horticulture

j/j hastain has written many chapbooks, artist books and full length works. j/j hastain is the inventor of The Mystical Sentence Projects and is author of several cross-genre books including the Trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press, 2012), Luci: a Forbidden Soteriology (Black Radish Books, 2015), The Non-Novels (Spuyten Duyvil, 2015) Apophallation Sketches (Radicle Press, 2016),and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance of Experimental Realisms. j/j's writing has recently appeared in a thing like you and me, Flapperhouse, Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe and Tarpaulin Sky.

j/j hastain's website.

Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, including Arsenic Lobster, DIAGRAM, Diode, FLAPPERHOUSE, Hermeneutic Chaos, Menacing Hedge and Reality Beach. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including Red Demolition (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaboration with Robert Cole called Mutant Neuron Codex Swarm (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), and a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX and her second full-length individual poetry book, Malformed Confetti is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. Her most recent full-length poetry book, A Red Witch, Every Which Way, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016.

Juliet Cook's website.

Also by j/j hastain & Juliet Cook: Dive Back Down A Red Witch, Every Which Way I'm Not Voting For Your Fake Dog Treats

May 2017

j/j hastain & Juliet Cook

Hexagonal Approach to Horticulture

The name of the facility was inside a flamboyant nest inside a brain with suction-cupped stingers that could not quite be named but had their own shape- shifting memorabilia. Inside a gut wrenching finger-crossed limbo tree I thought I would lose my mind but something else found me. Horror- story cooking in a convection oven. Hearth- mobile implied dragon eggs and I couldn't tell if they were edible or had revolvers stuck in the yolk. So I ate them right at once, of course to find out. When a ghost or a clown is the local figurehead what naps we take to divulge hidden maps. Sometimes we wake up drenched in sweat and polymers. Little fingers turning into plastic watering-cans pouring out blood or pomegranate seeds marking malleable norths, then a six-sided crescendo. We said we would never let it go until we'd gotten the alert. It had gotten to us. Procedure assists with procurement. Time to dig up the grave and fill it with new eyes.

It's hard to describe our poems in non-poem language. Some of our poems have to do with not fitting in to any one particular place or mind or body. For j/j there's always a strong draw of the ear. j/j feels like Juliet's approach is often a very visual response to the creation of lines. And then j/j ends up hearing something that slant rhymes with that picture, like a sort of synesthesia. Like a piñata with all the candy shooting in different directions and then stanza-ing the candy into our sizes, colors, and multi-shaped, semi-pointed textures. In some ways it's the creation of an ethics of free space. The Commons, but so freed of expectations around what's appropriate. It's like wearing a wig even if you don't have to because more hair feels good.

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