Tearing
i.m. Rose Strowman
what a thrill for a kid running up the staircase
he’s climbed a thousand times before
and seeing the wardrobe for the first time
not as a boring white object but as a newfound
treasure trove because this time he’s allowed
to take any garment he likes and tear it
to pieces because he’s told this is how
we say goodbye to the dead and now
years later when he hears the slightest tear
the ripping open of Velcro straps
or trousers splitting he feels something
tearing inside a sharp-angled fissure
weave its way through him like a snake
through grass recalling how easily in the end
the bobble hat came undone once he had
cut through the right thread how
the whole fabric just slackened fell apart
so effortlessly in his hands
James Strowman‘s poems have been published in The Frogmore Papers and The Blue Nib Literary Magazine. Currently based in France, James is a faculty member at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University where he teaches courses in contemporary Anglophone music and poetry.