Two Poems by Terese Mason Pierre
The Age of Trees
“That the body ripens
The sugars, juices augur a burst (an attempt)”
— Julia Polyck-O’Neill, “Augury (for Cixous)”
Grow out, a collapsed lung,
an arrogant rinse in autumn,
perspective-tense from concentrated sun.
Cut one in half, down, scour how
the rings form, ripples blood
music through wild paws
already dead.
Elaborate
on the assured: no one ruminates
a crushed feather, teaches a broken
dance to the mindful agitated,
how to breathe through tremors,
through reopened water.
The psalm lies packed—
fury a stippled universe across
a waxy sheath, a land
holding sound, a rot tangential
in eaves, in graves.
Augur a burst (divine), white
and purple flowers, the man
menagerie in the eye, prehistoric
emerald. Promise, then choke
a hereditary fault line,
coy in ubiquity,
swift in wrath.
Black. Clean.
Rigor Mortis
Everybody has been fired and
must leave immediately.
Automatic movement to fill
crates with neglected reflexes,
instincts yellowed with age.
Here is a photo tucked between
drawers, warped and smoky.
Here is the flash drive lost years ago.
Where did all this dust come from?
And why has the water in the cooler
turned thick? The fax machine
is everywhere inside the walls,
crying the approach of accepted
abandonment, of the connection forever lost.
The street does not exist to
be thrown out onto—
the streetlights are worms, though.
Family mouths preserve
rather than demand anew;
the spiritual denies holding.
This corporate funeral has broadcasted
the stars do not tire of making accommodations
Poetry
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May 3,
2021
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2-minute
read
Terese Mason Pierre
is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Hobart, The Puritan, Quill and Quire, and Strange Horizons, among others. She is the co-Editor-in-Chief of Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative literature journal. Terese has also previously volunteered with Shab-e She’r poetry reading series, and facilitated creative writing workshops. She is the author of chapbooks, Surface Area (Anstruther Press, 2019) and Manifest (Gap Riot Press, 2020). Terese lives and works in Toronto. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
Photo Credit: Soko Negash