Citrine Ash #12 (At Noon, Near New Fire)

Terrell Jamal Terry

 

Am I not different when I’m darkly alive?
I am root, wheel, surgery & soldier…

…the smell & sting & passion of the bee.
I think of what I took. I need tools to create heat.

The sun is mist in dozens of movie memories.
Full of lack is called longing in some corners.

If I am sentimentally dangerous
It’s just an inner mess resembling trouble.

Have you not grown from the graves of perceived
Failures, from incompleteness?

We spend seasons stitching our slashed hearts
& the hearts that we’ve slashed,

Until it isn’t more than a dubious symbol—
Fire has five names less than this red thing.

 
 

Terrell Jamal Terry is the author of the poetry collections “Aroma Truce” (Black Lawrence Press, 2017) and “Eyeless Light Seeing” (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). In 2018, a limited-edition chapbook will be published by The Song Cave. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, and the anthology “Bettering American Poetry 2015,” among others.