Scrap-Papers of a Negro Alchemist
NIGREDO
lying perfectly still
in a child-sized
bunk bed i haunt my own home.
they whisper rumors
and diagnoses, and all the while….
amongst detritus i swell, fungal.
within a sordid chrysalis
of grimy sheets and stale dejection ferments a new form of radioactive unlife.
☿♀☉♂♃♄♅♆♇
CITRINITAS
in class i once read that Black men die more catastrophically across class
than anybody else
in America.
i don’t remember where i once read that Black trans women are victims of homicide
more frequently
than any other group of fags
at the perfect intersection of identity i am heir to:
in America*
– – –
a plastic crown studded IDEAL VICTIM my funerary neons
and a glass coffin
i keep it quiet while i choke
(don’t want to make a scene)
and relitigate my traumas through teeth Bojangles white
for the love of god just lynch me
RUBEDO
in second-hand finery
amid opium haze
i worship at the altar of hermaphrodite trismegistus
thrice-greatest! three-dicked!
coming upon me and smothering my oracular sight with all the virile fertility of a godhead
He looks like all the queer Black poets who died and found new life
republished
repackaged
after the worms have devoured their relevance which is to say
She looks like all queer Black poets
Terrance Hudson (they/them) is ultimately indescribable in any tongue, spoken or written, but they promise to try here. They’re an emerging poet, established occultist, occasional editor, and June Gemini living in Chapel Hill, NC. Inspired by a long lineage of radical Black writers, their work deals in recurring themes: Blackness, queerness, chronic illness, and the social power of memory work and the archive.
Instagram: @contrecoupdetat