GLASS WOOD
Mirror bark reflects time, sublimation
& chance. I recognize your space
even clinging with people.
I am standing under rain near the edge
of device & wish.
It’s alright not running in a demon suit.
I’m going in. No shades. No blade.
I know what I was thinking—
work & levitation: warm illusion.
I have disappeared for several years.
Ask someone. My rocket is orange warmth;
may an early death do us not.
I can’t guess your hunger
or match the lack of mystery of money
when I’m a stone.
Tell me to do something against habit.
BROODING GAP
Violet sleep lightly shattered.
A painted day starts two shades
too dark. There’s that crowd
of thought he will not let come
near. Parachutes should
bail down the moody sky.
Blue emits from a whispering radio
its own slowly growing balloon.
A stream of the wildest dreams:
the worn down house guarded by
dying greens & a blind woman
who stood behind
the door’s screen & said I can see you.
Can you forget how to make this
seem real? An improbable
musical shuffle is made by a school
of red ants spinning a bread crumb
on honeyed wood.
Then his heart is tilted out of chest
over the city’s tallest bridge.
That black ice door that lingers
when you have not learned the plot
of your own crackling heart—
a cold fire fading, or
a little paranoia gone a long way.
HEADLIMB
I make myself forget from the beginning—
every sense, even the name
only instinct knows. It helps
that smoke on her head is distracting.
I can’t be real, another
language left unclaimed.
I’m trying to enclose a smile,
but it’s a rippled mist of style,
brittle & late illumination.
I was sore & saved
by an avalanche of heart-rock,
wall-feet & accessories.
I was hanging on by sweet sin,
the water, a filthy miracle,
& someone screaming
keep your eyes closed. I’m going back
without intention & doing it all over,
better informed, conditioned,
or perhaps resistant to bruising.
I don’t have to be from here—
yes is a suggestion.
Everybody’s got their syndrome
& no one needs to understand why
you have to be so into it.
However, pleasure is a ghost &
lovers at peace are soft lions.
I don’t care for being called a lover.
Terrell Jamal Terry’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Green Mountains Review, Washington Square Review, West Branch, cream city review, Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere.