SHOP
Daniel Sluman
Phantom You say the bargain was met when my leg hit the fire tumour cracking like glass in medicinal heat & it’s only desire to fill like love burnt as the contract ripped in two the hairless skin of my femur whittled back to the bone the weights were re-set blanked over & this was the price for life to be here glittering with laughter between the sheets with you but physics tells us nothing leaves so at night when we’ve drawn the day’s work from the curtains & set the plates back in the drawer this phantom clutches my hip & hauls me to the floor the stump as tense as the hornets’ nest we bagged from the shed in a bin-liner that summer the tremor in our hands not anger but desperation to live like the satchel of sparks my scar zips tight pleading to be dragged back from its death bone long rotted to ash & carbon spilt in a stream & sucked by weeds to further the simple life of light to grow just as my spine has strained the left side tautened into a ridge of muscle over the cleft as if preparing for the return in this life or the next ready to pull the tendons tight find the angle where the socket latches & clamps to slip back over the leg the doctors damned with swathes of iodine & saws
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