Citrine Ash #5 (Quandary)
Did eyes walk to a white moon?
Occasionally distant—
A faraway beach bonfire on Indian
Or African snow
Clap to peals of pounding thunder
Engulfed in umbrage,
Yes, this feeling is intrusive
Ocean beneath ocean beneath
My “love” is ¼ acquisition
Morning isn’t mine
This song disintegrates inside me
Orange umbrella one time
But dogs bark to the music
& chew pieces of shadows
A malleable exposition
Black florets stuck in their teeth
My eyes scrape the edge
Licking light around a flame’s cube
Like a salivating a tongue
I shrug my shoulders, I understand
Fog & Nest
If you ate the cold first
You would’ve come to the wrong place
I recall a sticky net, an icy rose,
& citrus soaking wood
I know a heart heaving with dusk
The notes of each chant quoted stars
Why are you like a cup of fire
Standing on a graveyard?
It’s a little different to see you unmade
Does our “disease” regress?
Assumption has been the model
Of our interactions
Your curiosity as an attack on my witness
I’m tired of convincing—
Let them be perplexed
The same speeches left vacancies in thought
Because I wanted to get closer
I was closest to sickness
Dissolved in an exploration
With unfelt reflection
Please be there again (no)
Pretend you need the experience
Or were you never daubed
With the carousel of regret?
Terrell Jamal Terry is the author of Aroma Truce, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2017. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Literary Review, Green Mountains Review, West Branch, The Journal, Guernica, Bettering American Poetry 2015, The Volta, and elsewhere. He resides in Pittsburgh, PA.