Separate
Sometimes I’m the wind in your garden
where your hands pluck the pegs
from the line & I hold each stitch
of your dress & streamed hair silently
for a second carrying your exquisite human weight
once again with its intricately slick mechanisms
of pressure & release & sometimes I’m a shoal
of birds exploding from the side of your house
slipped through the corner of your eye you stop
for a moment a memory teases from the lawn
& I want to tell you I need you that your eyes
are all the clichés we read about eyes wrestled
into a knot & lit that your clavicles hold the light
like buckets brimmed with rain but I’m not here
the sun slides off the wall & you get back to the task
of filling the bowl with clothes the breeze dropping
down to the floor as you pull a band from your back-
pocket squeeze a silly notion through the tip
of your ponytail turn & walk back through the door
Daniel Sluman is a 28 year old writer based in Cheltenham, whose debut Absence has a weight of its own was released to critical acclaim in 2012 through Nine Arches Press. He has been published widely in journals in the UK and abroad, including B O D Y, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Hinterland, and Popshot. He gained a BA and MA in Creative Writing at University of Gloucestershire, and won AHRC funding for his PhD into Disability Poetics, at BCU starting in 2014.
Sluman’s “Separate” has clarity and force using a method giving the reader room to breathe and think the lines on her own. The method fulfills the promise of the ultimate subject, and I do mean ultimate. Bravo!
Reblogged this on Chris Fewings.