Friday 9 October 2015

Daniel Sluman's the terrible (Nine Arches, 2015)

I was reading this book to provide a blurb and couldn't help underlining favourite passages--a good sign, to be sure. Here they are:


                                     their heads
full of yes      each night   a heaved dice

& we're driving further through it each year

*

                                              the faces

from our life   passing   like boarded-up doors


from "1991-2006"


the smell of motor oil & sawdust
& the moon threaded through

opening stanza of "confession"


                             & we're here again
passing the whiskey that started the fire
in our throats    watching the town
lights wash slowly   into darkness

end of "matches"


                                ...these
morning-breakers    rubbing

their hands   & checking the mirror
each with their own nightmare

tensed like a razor over
the skin of another morning

facing the exhaustion
of ever-thickening snow

second half of "winter"


I'll keep this lightning trapped in my hip
my strange weather    the dent I sank into
will rise from the sofa in a mist
of cologne & possibilities

end of "doppelganger"


                        where we sit & empty
glass after glass into the night   your son asleep
the walls creeping closer to the ghostly down
on his neck

*

the roof dreaming its only dream
of the weight of rain

from "the cottage"


tonight is a rope we can burn & burn

opening line of "affair"


              she tried to shake the terrible
from me    until the bed glittered like the sea

from "the terrible"


the gaping o of you

from "L O V E"


in dreams


I have two legs   my mother stays
& childhood is a single house

*

with a gin in hand I drink
myself to perfection each night

rather obviously, from "in dreams"



glittering with laughter in the sheets beside you


from "phantom"










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