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Empire<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The river has called for you. You step onto the light of day as you climb<\/p>\n out from a granite tunnel carved from the mantle. The water has formed<\/p>\n small grey pools in your feet and it soaks you. A pale spider is hanging<\/p>\n from a hollow tree dangling from its own silken atoms and you wrap y-<\/p>\n our fingers around it and feel its tension. The spider runs across your h-<\/p>\n ands and fingers and you turn them in the sunlight. You watch it melt i-<\/p>\n n the bright and appear again in the darkness. Its limbs are thin like hai-<\/p>\n r and you can barely feel it. Look at it. The river has called for you and<\/p>\n you need to answer. Your shoes have worn away and when you head do-<\/p>\n wn the shale path the rock wall turns from you. The ground has cut your<\/p>\n foot and the blood from your sole is mingling with the earth and its colo-<\/p>\n ur is changing. The hills are sloping down and the sun is muddled by the<\/p>\n cloud line forming. It means to punctuate the horizon with broken smoke<\/p>\n and jagged vapours and the air is damp and sticks in your chest and leave-<\/p>\n s moisture on your eyelids. You walk towards the heavy guttural river and<\/p>\n the water has thronged the shoreside marking silt wash across the bank an-<\/p>\n d dead leaf debris where it laps highest. The water bathes your bloodied fe-<\/p>\n et as you step into it and the current is callous in its rhythmic changings. Y-<\/p>\n ou dunk your head into the water and the cold migrates into your bones. Yo-<\/p>\n ur breath is sharp when you break the surface and you feel the cold of rivers<\/p>\n past and present and you think of every man woman and child who has stood<\/p>\n in this water and felt their heart race and their teeth chatter. The sky is now c-<\/p>\n learing. You look up and there is light rain falling. Your fingers look like river b-<\/p>\n eds. Beside you is the mountain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ezra Miles<\/strong> is a poet from London. His work explores the subconscious mind and is often concerned with the presence of\u00a0unspoken violence within the family home. His poetry has previously appeared in Allegro Poetry <\/em>and Poetry Pacific.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Empire The river has called for you. You step onto the light of day as you climb out from a granite tunnel carved from the mantle. The water has formed small grey pools in your feet and it soaks you. A pale spider is hanging from a hollow tree dangling from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17198,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17007\/revisions\/17198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}