Today’s choice
Previous poems
Daniel Sluman
Ceilings
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
each evening they drop
a little closer
in rooms that carry us
from one year
to the next
we float below water stains
& cracks
lit like reels of stars
my faith
in a better reality frayed
to a single thread
as I scan the cobwebbed beams
in silence
& wait for a sign
that refuses to drop
lidocaine-bright
or yellowed from bowers of smoke
some nights only darkness seems
to keep the roof up
& each evening
the quietness wraps
a little tighter
as we sink into the sheets
eyes dazed shut
our prayers like hands
crawling
over the drips of faux-plaster
how our shirts slip from one colour
to the next
& time is always in deficit
catching up or catching on
to something half-gone
Daniel Sluman is a 39-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 was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.
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