3 Poems by Terrence Arjoon
Night of the Scorpions
(5/24/24)
It would serve no purpose to find
a way out of this entanglement.
When I sleep I am covered in
scorpions. Black carapace, tail
curved above, pincers grasping
at nothing it seems, just grasping!
But if I am the bed for scorpions,
To sleep, and dream, and go down to
diagram their houses,
I must be happy.
This Earth, This Passage
(After Isamu Noguchi 5/24/24)
In the city to build this
city, whose terraces are
the color of stars, roundness,
to be departed from, blown green
in the wind. This Earth is the name
of my belly, full of pear juice, and cherry
compote, skin daubed, fingerprints from
my love, to cover my body. Round, this passage,
this Earth, to bring her back to me, to cover
me once again.
Butterflies and Charlotte’s sparrows, and mint,
nothing appears more likely than a return,
somewhere on the underside of this century,
to that city whose aqueducts poured caffé
corretto down the avenues of this earth, muddy;
almost browned, languorous, but now nothing
looks less likely, the green lightlimned
in the basalt passages of my life.
On Lightning
(5/22/24)
Stuck in dead smallpox nights of the last century. Lightning is a corporation,
a conglomeration situated in far flung municipalities— Spello, Tirana, Cairo (NY).
benefactors include the wind, the smelly brown hunting dogs em-barked in a concrete
castiglione several kilometers away, and a handful of ripe fava beans picked by one
Chicory Yuga, washed and waiting and the sink. Fuck with the money lightning comes
at your door; darkening the whole feel of your abode and you go out feet first then. Dirt
road, flint chips in two columns adumbrate the center, as the smell of yellow beeswax
corrugates the air surrounding the husked-out castiglione. Beeswax, enter litharge, and
mix mastic+ turpentine. Lightning trituration in the palazzo, as workers hurry to finish
the Annunziata la Mulinella: Scardanelli naps in the apse; the cold marble brushing
against the nape of his neck, above the color of his worn linen suit, fragile, almost
paper, pockets stuffed with snap peas, orzo, and a handful of snap peas.
Terrence Arjoon is a poet, editor, and critic whose work has appeared in Tagvverk, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and Smooth Friend, among other publications. His chapbook Acid Splash, or Into Blue Caves was published by 1080press where he is an editor. His book The Disinherited is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse.