Daniel Sluman
dance
I fall apart in your hands each day
the nerve pinned between your fingers
like a sewing needle the walk
that would stride through the wide doors
of bars now crumpling to a limp
you force your hands into my shoulder
pull two fingers behind the bone
until the crack spits glitter in the backs
of my eyes but nothing will straighten
my body for sleep where you dream
of steam-pressed shirts & strap-less dresses
as you're drawn through the ballroom
once again by someone who can lift you
to the light like crystal but just as the dancer
is a controlled-demolition of the body
I spasm & fall into this crippled choreography
* * *
& this is love
she goes limp falls into my arms
like an important looking letter
I help her to the bathroom
& sit the other side of the door
tearing nails between my teeth
clutching the phone like a safety rope
& this is love how we live between
the side-effects of glittering pills
the wads of her dead hair snarled
in the plug-hole the morning cigarette
that shakes in her hand before her kiss
once again says whateverhappens I ring
the ambulance when I hear her head smack
the floor & in the crazed flutter of her lids
I see a million lives for us each one perfect
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 It's 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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