by Chloe Cook

Almost nothing is known
of its ecological role.
No herbivores have shown
interest in the green marble

burrowing like a boil
in the coral’s epidermis,
immune to benzoyl
peroxide and remiss

to popping unprovoked.
Without neurons, it vegetates
like a grudge, hard and cloaked
in nacre, fine to satiate

its most revered tenet:
solitude. The “eye” grows alone,
single-celled, the only tenant
of the lot, sea-fast though

the name’s a misnomer—
it can’t see. It would be useless
stowed in any sailor’s
socket, but a seamstress

might pluck it for its sheen:
ornamental grape sewn
into a bodice gone unseen
by men; gem for one’s own.

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Chloe Cook's work is featured in The New Criterion, The Southeast Review, Quarterly West, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from Community of Writers, Poetry by the Sea, and the Key West Literary Seminar. A 2025 Helen Degen Cohen Fellow at RHINO, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida. See chloecookwrites.com.