Imi’s Reviews > The Art of Falling > Status Update

This one started the same as the others,
the waiting for midnight, talking to strangers
as what's left of the year drags itself off

and we stand on the bridge as fireworks
burst silent at midnight, the tipping point
when you could fall between years

From 'New Year's Eve'

You remembered nothing of your journey,
minutes of your life deleted and only this room
to witness your passing. I can only guess

which loving object tried to catch you, which voice
pulled me from my sleep. I kick the bath. It answers
in a low familiar tone. I stamp. The floor bellows
its reply. The room beneath echoes like a drum.

From 'The Fall'

End of 2nd section, the poems of which account an abusive relationship. My heart hurts.

It doesn't feel as if ten years have passed.
I remember the bedroom window. The truck
parked and blocking all the light. I could laugh
if this thing in my chest stopped breaking. It was luck

that got me out of it. Still I want you to read these words.
I try to make you human. I pretend that I've been heard.

From 'Human'

What happened sits in my heart like a stone.
You told me I'd be writing about
it all my life, when I asked
how to stop saying these things to the moon.
I told you how writing it makes the dark
lift and then settle again like a flock of birds.

From 'How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping'

There was a time when I was translated by violence,
there were times I prayed to be turned into a flower
or a tree, something he wouldn't recognise as me.

From 'Translation'

Because they tried to make me say your name,
the shame and blame and frame of it,
the dirty little game of it, the dark and distant
heart of it, the cannot be a part of it,
[...] the rut and fuck and muck of it,
the not-forgotten hurt of it, the syllable
stop-dead of it, the starting in the throat of it,
the ending at the teeth of it.

From 'Your Name'

I can't remember a single thing we said
to one another but I remember your

black leather jacket, your one pair
of good black trousers. I remember

arguing all night, but not what about.
I remember sleep was something

that did not belong to me. I swear
I remember nothing, just your outline

at the foot of the bed, you are shouting
as if calling me from some distant shore,

From 'Your Hands'

This is the language of insects, this body
low to the ground, this single purpose,
this living with dirt, this stop-start-stop,
this construction of fabulous structures,
this non-human logic, this cannot-live-without-
the-other, this no-good-as-a-single-entity,
this language, this language, please I cannot
meet your kind again, [...]

From 'The Language of Insects'

This is for falling which is so close to failing
or to falter or fill; as in I faltered when I heard
you were here; as in I filtered you out
of my life; as in I've had my fill of falling:
a fall from grace, a fall from God,
to fall in love or to fall through the gap,
snow fall, rain fall, falling stars,
the house falls into disrepair,
to fall in with the wrong crowd,
[...]

From 'The Art of Falling'

still I love the train, its sheer unstoppability,
its relentless pressing on, and the way the track
stretches its limb across the estuary
as the sheep eat greedily at the salty grass,
and thinking that if the sheep aren't rounded up

will they stand and let the tide come in, because
that's what sheep do, they don't save themselves,
and knowing people have drowned out there

From 'Barrow to Sheffield'