TERRELL JAMAL TERRY

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Night-dark dust surrounds the radio
It was a minty green April 4th all day

I painted the bricks white
In the room that doesn’t exist

I built a resort
An unburied pyramid

Wind was collecting outside
I forgot to write it was magic

I cut the news
I am not well when I hurry

Must I smell everything?
Lavender climax for the nose

Poems spread over the sea
I grabbed all of the air

I was making myself miserable
I needed a teaspoon of fearlessness

Or I could not paint the leaves
Yellow, brown & red

This is only because of possibility
The flames got messy

Night Ship

Now I’m not only mine.
Or, I never was & no words could tell me clearly.

Don’t let me think.
My thoughts won’t stop talking on another night ship: 

I need sugar; I’ll eat those leftover buttered potatoes for breakfast;
I'm out of honey & tea.

I have carried old furniture that weighs on the spine of the mind. 
I shouldn't over-orchestrate; I should just say I drank

This year I will learn to say I need help & seek it. 
As someone who “helps” texted succinctly:

That develops in time through practice.
I guess I’ll need lots of seeking.

I’m not better without the initial flames of fears,
When moved to movement

Until fear is thawed in myself.
Freeze the flames, so to speak.

I’ll press pause on lonelier poems full of heartmoons
& half-pitied breathing.

It gets cold in the dark hours; I forgot to gulp 8 ounces of water
Before trying to sleep—& I wasn’t nearly sleeping.

Ovals

Three meandering identities
Condescend my spirit’s “spirit”

A snowy amalgamation eyed
Five secret rooms of tranquility

Conflicted time in its numbers
Loss is smoke & fire’s gain

Soft to head to understand
Yellow doors on the ceiling

We are remnants of stars
Our scars, remnants of us

I lived vicariously slipping
Through various deaths

In mostly disposable theories
I have no more poems in me

I’m encouraged by devotion
Belief & unbelief as neither

Terrell Jamal Terry is the author of Aroma Truce (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, West Branch, The Journal, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. He resides in Pittsburgh, PA. You can find him at terrelljamalterry.com.