Love Poem: Phoenix
after Donika Kelly
I see your eyes last, before dust.
In any new required birth, what remains:
plumage gold and striking, the black plucked
skin beneath, palimpsested trial.
Love, I would sing to you
every blazing star, every hunted ballad
that burnishes. I would make a burnishing[1]
of you, which is to say, I am in constant motion,
which is to say, I grieve everything—
my wings on fire, cracking, lifting your voice
into legend and evolution. My love, put down
the earth. Nothing lasts forever.
My love, I last forever
[1]from, “Love Poem: Centaur”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
© 2023 Terese Mason Pierre
Terese Mason Pierre is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Fantasy, Strange Horizons, FIYAH, and Star*Line, among others. Her work has been nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, the Elgin Award, the Aurora Award, and the Ignyte Award. She is one of ten winners of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize, and was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Terese is an editor at Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative literature journal, and co-Director of AugurCon, Augur‘s biennial speculative literature conference. She has co-hosted poetry reading series, spoken at conferences, organized literary events, judged writing contests, 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, Canada. Visit her website at www.teresemasonpierre.com.
