Two Poems by Daniel Sluman

Chronic

god whispered in my ear

but the only word I caught
was pain

lord I have learnt
to suffer well

to keep silent

as the lit nerve stirs my body
into meaning each morning

each time it begins
like a murmur

somewhere inside me

gathers itself
to a loose gust pushing

the window open

& say I understand the lesson
this life has taught me

to know myself
to the root of each hair

to cherish this feeling
pale & seized around the suffering

I’m drunk on
well what kind of surrender is this?

crumpled in the footwell
of your dads car

as he drives you to the hospital

not knowing what else to do
at night I hang over my body

in bed

& watch the pain climb inside me
whilst I sleep

if there is faith
it is the faith required

to keep waking inside
this immovable reality

this ache that tells me
to love loudly

the body on fire

Honeymoon

we spat into the atlantic

& consummated our marriage
three days late

in this hotel hung over the lip
of the sea

sharpening itself on the beach

cutting   re-cutting
the edge of its knowing

against what it is not

the tide’s quiet promise
to pull us

into nothingness  

to strip us of our clothes
our jewellery

our hair from the skin
it hangs over

to grind our doubts into sand

for three nights we lived
& loved

against our proximity to the past

the box of ivory lingerie
you buried like a body

under the bed for a year  

voices of ex-lovers
unravelling back to breath

how we drank
too much wine

fell up the stairs to our room

the stars cold
as butter

all forms dissolving
into the spray

as we watched the terms
of our prior life slip

through the ocean’s pane

late-night
in the harbour

fish & chips burning in our laps

& framed by the headlights
of our car

behind us

gold rings spilling
into the dark

Daniel Sluman is a 38-year-old poet and disability rights activist. He co-edited the first major UK Disability poetry anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, and he has published three poetry collections with Nine Arches Press. His most recent collection, single window, was released in September 2021 and shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.