Poetry by Samantha Terrell

      Dan Finnen CC




Misery Loves Company

I set out charcuterie and stare
into dusk, waiting.

Cars pass the window,
headlights flickering on.

I watch the juncos gather briefly. 
I’m spotted, and soon they’re gone.

Concerns stay – 
              worry for the warbler I rarely see; 
              anxiety for the antlered deer; 
              bothered by the lack of bear this year.

These days are dim-lit, lackluster, spirit drab. 
And I wait in silence, needing to hear you say it too.

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Iterations

When the end of the world comes, I want to be 
                inside an automatic car-wash – 
enshrouded in a cocoon of cleanliness, 

opera blaring on the car stereo, loud enough to hear 
but not block out the roar of the big blue brushes 

spinning, gently rocking
my steel and fiberglass cradle. And – 

no matter what happens after the 
                end of the world – I’ll know that at least 
in that moment, I was one version of my best self.

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Samantha Terrell is the author of multiple five-star collections and curator of the poetry series, SHINE, featuring her fellow contemporaries from around the globe. Her poems have been widely anthologized, recently in:  100 Subtexts, Dissident Voice, Eunoia Review, Fevers of the Mind, and others. Terrell and family reside in upstate New York where she admires sunbeams splattered on a hardwood floor and the quiet after snowfall.