Daniel Sluman

 

THE REALISATION

 

no New York-skyline-moment

no dark fumblings   smashed pale with ecstasy on the sofa
no violets in the morning coffee    the two stains wiped clean

no late-night-ontology   sat on the scratched kitchen worktop
waiting for the sunrise    to smudge through the glass      

your face will never shatter between my hands again     
your son will forget my name & you’ll will wince with reflex

at the sight of every amputee       our daughter    a concept 
I’ve dreamt of enough to be at my fingertips      your blood-red hair      

my lips which were never worth the value you shored your life against            
you will redact my version of us with the black highlighters of your eyes    

 
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AWAY

 

the first woman whose hair didn’t melt
in my hands        you sweated out the myths

the adverts slipped in your milk         miraculous 
your calves          the poem I couldn’t write	

one glance had me crawling out of the tumbler   
listening to your blood sing      as you slept      

our early life together   a trail of ash-greased clothes 
& I’m pinching our past     into a nosebleed       

it flows how your hair-dye gored   the bathroom sink       
Winehouse staining the air      the evening’s blister    

tore into one long burn        our dreams so light 
it seemed a stiff breeze could have taken them	

 
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DANIEL SLUMAN‘s poems have appeared widely in journals such as Cadaverine, Popshot, Shit Creek Review, and Under the Radar. He received an MA in Creative & Critical Writing from the University of Gloucestershire in 2012 and his debut full-length collection, Absence has a weight of its own, was published in 2012. His second collection, the terrible, will be published Autumn/Winter 2015, also with Nine Arches Press.
 
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Read more work by Daniel Sluman:

 
Three more poems by Daniel Sluman in B O D Y
Poem at Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos
Two poems at Wordgathering