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the Clock

by Marianne Daniels

It clots the room with its tutting tongue, my flesh underneath; sectioned up like butchers meat. Each second is pronounced; lines drown upon my brow and grease  fevered cheeks, the veins gathering speed where my fists grip the looseness of words that gutter-fit from night and sense. The cut of day, beamed as sharp as knives; draws flecks of dust, years of skin  as if by moving into this continu...

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Sunday 30th December 2012 2:35 pm

Music

by Marianne Daniels

 
Such clothes it threads
with every strumming tool -
I awake to the songs skinned on me;
the nerve of hairs,
a delicious fur of vibrations.
 
Sometimes my cause
is electric, my itch desired
for the rough;
an octave split upon
the humpback whale,
a pulse shredding;
ribbon thick.
 
Sometimes my cures
are private embryonic sounds;
...

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Tuesday 11th December 2012 1:38 pm

Sun Fight

by Marianne Daniels

 

 
Obsessive, yes
with the things unable to disclose –
the colour of my infant years;
the warm goo of being the only one
to proudly lamp the black open sky.
 
 
I have the ruins;
something that burns your shoulder,
hard to clench your fist in the pull
of an orange ripe from the tree.
Your hands, my dear, your hands
 
from climbing to ...

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Friday 30th November 2012 2:30 pm

Jump

by Marianne Daniels

 
Your feet carving into a hill
and down to the river become
poisonous paths of yellow sick
heads;
chummy dares for the pluck
of your fingers yet.
 
Where the spring of you is –
tongue lolling, the  soft
of laughter, loosely tasted
in the breeze – a bud
to summer, you are
forward; always.
 
Always going somewhere
hunger lunged
...

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Wednesday 28th November 2012 10:58 am

The Ugly Sister

by Marianne Daniels

 

The bouquets -
lips puckered for the sun –
are girlish ploys; patterned
and perfumed for command;
not love words,
standing prominent on her dresser.
 
I watch how they shy away
from the colour of her hair,
the pull of her comb,
the smile of her lipstick.
Their thorns are ripe,
hurt rough; incisors for circumcision.
 
I sit on the end...

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Wednesday 14th November 2012 2:36 pm

Intermission

by Marianne Daniels

 
 
Softly you come in,
where the afternoon melts;
a sigh in step -
 
the ways to make you see,
expect what weeks
number out – the line
 
of summer fading on my back;
an orange press of glass
and the pour of your shoulder.
 
Our fingers twist in the cord;
the hiss of dark pursed
and stung on the lip, folding in sleeps
 
of ...

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Friday 9th November 2012 2:58 pm

Discipline

by Marianne Daniels

 

 
 
The tin can hits; incisors, molars, wincing gums –
a funk of prosperity
 
and that slowly sliding choke
of clarity.  
 
 It is way over the lip.
 
This need in you to visit words, to prick the soles of syllables
with flags,
 
why – it burps; your thoughts too fizzy
with effect.
 
(The cataracts of too many dotted
eyes...

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Wednesday 7th November 2012 3:41 pm

Blue

by Marianne Daniels

 
 
is a veil drawn to distract;
the colour of God -
an unforgettable sky -
 
and in shelter of this,  a virgin;
sacred  pulses of unease
and a church of unified pretence.
 
Pulled at the sleeve
of this blue acid
tear of  streetlight,
 
is the spill of yellow -
an idiot full to the brim;
the vein that burst for heaven.
 
Wh...

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Monday 5th November 2012 1:53 pm

Grazed

by Marianne Daniels

 
 
Her skin is rumbled with oak
in the red; her lessened and bent over form,
her mouth of bitch wood,
jewelled in the ruby bulbed
beat of the bath tub.
 
The sins of her shins are in jeans stitched up and patched up; the clods of her feet tucked under
 
her rocking chin to knee.
    
“I still remember the colour of the path in the rain. I’ll be
...

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Thursday 25th October 2012 11:22 am

Sick Day

by Marianne Daniels

 
Secular with the vernacular
and plump my tongue
of one singing existence,
is the peel of onion skin;
my knife spindled on fluorescence
and the feel of chicken pimpled plastic.
 
The operation is here;
diced clacks of tonsils,
a brace of mustard gas,
a kiss of dusted wires,
incisions licked and a maggot fire.
 
 
The walloped lump of ...

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Wednesday 24th October 2012 9:35 am

Hands

by Marianne Daniels

 

When I  hold the sun in the prayer shape
of my hands, the fidelity of the light -
a warmth  peeking through,  a formation
of angles that decorate - plots your
 
name into my palms. These beams
are like scaffolding, workers of joy;
Damsel fly wings whose structures
kiss the light and piece together
 
stain glass windows of green
and blue. Within ...

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Tuesday 16th October 2012 3:51 pm

Tree

by Marianne Daniels

 

 

The red rob of the sun,
pools, unpools;
bleeds white the arc of the sky,
a low earth this winter,
a grained stroke stain of a cloud.
 
                                                Before the veined eclipse
                                                drooling the heart of the hand,
                                                is a black tree ...

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Monday 8th October 2012 3:40 pm

Cling

by Marianne Daniels

 

The reasons to be
are callous starting points;
            your legs – dumpling
unrefined
kicks of chimp,
 
a toe in your mouth,
a taste of how far
you will have to go.
 
Your nuzzling
intolerant death trap
sinewy kiss
of love –
 
is what
but all the colours
of an argument?
 
You tug.
 
You will not let me...

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Friday 5th October 2012 12:40 pm

Girl

by Marianne Daniels

 
She folds in the corners of the napkin,
lips tight, something hidden -
her head tilting in the light of  lace;
the window drawing in a space untested.
 
The shelter of her play sighs;
a fluttering of pages  a diary encouraged
for parts of her not to see,
just know as quick as her laughter disguises.
 
For years I have seen these fields
ripple in...

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Thursday 4th October 2012 11:39 am

The Yard

by Marianne Daniels

The weeds are cramped in;
boisterous fingers curved around
empty glass bottles
climbed with mildew, fudged with rain.
 
They shiver –
the frizzing of their hair
swamped with the near October;
a place where yellow sleeps in grey.
 
The gate is winced in tight;
the cord around the bolt,
wet raw. Over the wall
a  tre...

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Friday 28th September 2012 12:17 pm

Snow Fox

by Marianne Daniels

 
His feet are moth wolves
padding in the blot of white and blue,
 
head low - a sharp salmon snap
the horizon tempts.
 
His breath is wet,
cleaned upon the static heart
 
the ground becomes;
bitter laps of water,
 
frigid claps of earth.
He faces the wind,
 
teased upon his fur;
a set of fingers, sharpening instinct,
 
...

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Monday 24th September 2012 11:35 am

A Speck of Dirt

by Marianne Daniels

 
I have learnt from you, the climate
of wanting things is as fore changing
as the way a woman smiles –
lipped upon a grease of frosted taupe,
mouthing invisible promises.
 
I have learnt the rip of this disguise
in the way you touched my hair - a veil
following me to the root, parrying my eyes
with a flex of dead earth,
my understanding of the sky, p...

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Monday 17th September 2012 2:39 pm

Meadow Lane

by Marianne Daniels

 
Under the fingernail,
the child was already growing green.
She kept touching the day
where the fox fur and the meadow clots,
the lane she took -
a slight from the village,
in jade and moss damp cobbles.
 
It would turn, the hex gild of chlorophyll,
 unbalance her scuffed patent shoes,
her school books slipping out of reach -
the pain, the bowel...

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Monday 17th September 2012 11:55 am

Requiescat

by Marianne Daniels

 

Your death has long since been
strained into the sky;
the birds that scar – with cries more than I could,
touching the grey bell, passing through -
I envy their innocence
 
for they know you
as something that had never existed,
not hung upon the embroidery of the clouds.
I have no breath of ignorance
to hide in
 
...

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Thursday 13th September 2012 3:03 pm

Inanimate

by Marianne Daniels

Why do you roll me in your hand as if I were a simple pet?
The oil of the sun
clean on my shoulder, excites, chooses you
to throw me away with a whimsical kiss,
grind your thumb as you wish –
an imprint without standing gravity,
a force you exert blindly.
 
I am not a stone, a land you claim by holding;
fingers white on a knuckle bed,
a corset of love tha...

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Friday 7th September 2012 10:36 am

Through the Parting Grey

by Marianne Daniels

Where do we hide?
 
In the wilt of a holiday past, the twenty years of looking out;
scavenging, the eager films rolling on,
of downy feathers left in a nest
and my father finding me a stick
to steady the heather dressed cliffs
with purple palms, falling giddy over the rocks.
 
In the summer I was born curious. Through gentle greys
I collected the sea and ...

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Monday 3rd September 2012 3:06 pm

Moth

by Marianne Daniels

 
You are suited for the night –
the thought of it welded in the limb,
a law with love asleep, turning over in the moon’s embrace.
I see you scale the wall with my tiger heart –
grip things incessantly with your dust filled mouth
and you frighten me without pretence; show me what it is to be
the victim of a woman –
my arching sob tilted into the tide...
 
...

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Thursday 30th August 2012 11:33 am

Scarecrow

by Marianne Daniels

 
 
I am somebody else -
tree hearted, rung with autumn;
my hands stroking the hard air,
a dream too fast with silver shrieks
and black tooth combs the Sky divided,
throttled with flight and fear.
 
 
She is somebody else -
a veil of curious moods,
blue glues of pluto and white horses
and nailed I cannot compete -
the furrows strain their ...

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Thursday 16th August 2012 11:48 am

Hallgrímskirkja

by Marianne Daniels

 
The thought of it persists, the blue and white 
of Iceland, where mastery and theatre unite;
a church of the stubborn born earth,
a magnetic glory be, 
the shape of a Killer whale.
 
It excites; grey trips of seagulls –
the throat of the ocean, curious,
and bone by bone – cleaned of,  hairs that quiver
in the bolt – a string sharp gut to the heart,
...

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Thursday 28th June 2012 11:55 am

Tree Hollow

by Marianne Daniels

 
From the inside, the lung closed –
jade lips, amber wrists,
tucked under the wet day, a swirl
of oyster skin; roots imagined from the sea
 
where the bark frays and the rocks loom,
bent limbs skimming, and open locks.
Inside, inside – the nut grin, the hazel hair,
spider twinned with a dripping stare -
 
I feel the room bruise me from within,
da...

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Wednesday 20th June 2012 1:50 pm

The Vague Day

by Marianne Daniels

 

 

All at once, the hours of the day fudge –

thick throated ticking as the clock grows dimmer in the light

and in creeps a sleep that never fully takes hold;

 

variations of slate whispers on a shoulder blade –

turning over, shadowing the eyes with Payne’s grey,

a memory of a storm; lungs filled with water.

 

The dreams descend, whistling, hysterical, al...

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Monday 11th June 2012 3:36 pm

The Passenger

by Marianne Daniels

“I don’t think I need any of you”

 

                     *

 

They sit in the circle – each part with arms folded,

creased in. Cautious to the centre of the light -

behind them, their secrets close in sharp black.

By being together, a self absorbs the room –

moving in and out, like a breath finding sleep.

 

 

She speaks first, the one with the dumpli...

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Tuesday 29th May 2012 2:08 pm

The Gaze

by Marianne Daniels

 

 

Something so assuming – a frame

to bless or condemn,

 neither giving or consuming, the tiny moments of what you are –

they fall around me like summer petals –

to touch, I fear a smear –

 

of the plaits twilight fed through  -

her hair, her eyes – these moments are too soon -

 you die, a breath of first and last –

 hands move across the table,  wor...

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Tuesday 22nd May 2012 2:32 pm

Pure

by Marianne Daniels

 

                                                                                                                                     Marred with a tooth rimmed desire, an oil skimmed glass upon

the back of my calves – my muscles - tendons, a graze of memory –  are my decision

to complete the arrogance; shave away the bristle grin mistake of not being a man. 

 

My bathroom...

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Wednesday 16th May 2012 3:43 pm

Drift Kindly

by Marianne Daniels

Shape they do,

these vague conspirators -

delusions of design in the growl of my thoughts -

attaching myself to any I,

foreseeing my accidents before I do,

curling me up in the pillows of incompleteness –

 

dread and dead, I am fish mouthed

with.

 

I would give you up, in kindness –

this on the dip of a sell by date,

my loop of being so unsure ...

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Tuesday 8th May 2012 3:30 pm

War Quiet

by Marianne Daniels

Milk hearted, a timid stunt

of drifts and thieves distorted

 

the silks of a grave surpassed -

a  lay  unchartered, where fray

 

and wound next glory became

a khaki hill without a name.

 

The tame of each dread root

thwarted – the tip of each snapped finger

 

larked, and dipped its fever

into parts of men long since lost -

 

a thousand...

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Friday 4th May 2012 11:27 am

Pyjama Nimble

by Marianne Daniels

For clemency, I lie you at the end of my bed –

rest, and keep the flight of my wrecked dreams at bay - 

this is your sleep,

a seam of undisturbed silk.

 

I’ll take my psychiatry with the fluorescence of the day,

there is no hurried rivulet for you to claim,

calm though you are, in the pest, be calmer still in my absence.

 

The draw of each hour wil...

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Thursday 26th April 2012 12:33 pm

Thoughts

by Marianne Daniels

Each riddle (cause for, unheard) - drooled upon the glimpse of psyche,

playmate vie with the portent day, woken to

with heavy rind,  a cloth

of circumstance –

is a zephyr trail, a bipolar dupe;

a rush of strawberries or the frugal vines of bed grapes.

We are angles bloated, presumed

controllers of our cortex –

trip wires and bobbin,

spun upon words that mean...

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Tuesday 24th April 2012 3:30 pm

Inception

by Marianne Daniels

 

She was cinder born, the girl you met –

curate’s egg smashed to ash.

She couldn’t weaken her heart to hold

something of herself –

an arm underneath her skirt,

turning her this way and that,

through her jaw –

ammunition for section.

She was rough for love,

dragged slate, flint ticked,

a quarry of crashes –

nose, cheek, fractures of kisses

a l...

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Monday 23rd April 2012 12:15 pm

Dose

by Marianne Daniels

In the dullness of my night cap

are ten white stars.

They reach for me inside, a clay of thought,

a hard consciousness -

to soothe, to stroke,

a warm ellipse over my forehead,

a heavy mushroom descending to press.

 

They seep into my palm’s dive,

pouring my shoulder, a cleft of mercury –

eye to lid, transparent –

my ceiling, cloak spent and cotton

...

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Thursday 19th April 2012 1:36 pm

Spores

by Marianne Daniels

A rag, a veil hacked with complaint –

dragging through my windpipe,

yellow wayward sacks of children,

bitten or burnt, without a home –

a compass air spokes my inner ear,

a design of irritation.

 

A drastic limp – my corner of charge –

hits, hemp and knock knee’d  -

there is a shatter of repulse, my falling

swallowed continuance,

heather seed pierced...

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Tuesday 17th April 2012 10:03 am

Brighton Marathon Donations

by Marianne Daniels

This isn't anything to do with poetry but am hoping my lovely poet friends will help me out. I am running the brighton Marathon this sunday for The Cambodian Children's Society.

The Cambodian Children’s Charity (‘CamKids’) is a development and relief organisation, dedicated to providing direct aid to poor children in Cambodia. Its principal objective is to help children in Cambodia who are ...

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Friday 13th April 2012 5:48 pm

Saint to Starve

by Marianne Daniels

The presence is abandoned –

a window dressed in dull possessions,

things left; growing shadows of circumcision.

Tough to echo - the eaten heat  - a running thought

escapes to elope, for lesser charms of warmth

take hold – the stagnant jar,

the frigid penny rimmed with dust.

 

Sight to victim – remain to harm –

there is a room, no one kno...

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Friday 13th April 2012 2:33 pm

Tawny Bridge

by Marianne Daniels

Hell mithered an itch that day,
an automated path down to the river
where I found the bridge, a sulky spot
to sit and slink my limbs; a dripping prose
of adolescence that would never disappear.
By the grit of this – seeing my sore gluttony,
unconcerned by the fish below - 
 a stranger was spurred to share my seat,
...

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Friday 30th March 2012 5:05 pm

Enter Violet

by Marianne Daniels

 

Into the submission,

I crawled - hands and knees,

a hinge of witch blood,

the bark, bedded down -

me, a girl of impressionable root.

 

Hollowed, pumpkin scooped,

tendrils of my better seed,

caught the needle and the sap,

pulled into the wood –

I was a girl, 

like everyone said.

 

It came for me 

 to

hind my legs, fermented snaps

of ...

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Thursday 29th March 2012 1:06 pm

Portrait of Love on a Dove’s Tail

by Marianne Daniels

 

Pale, the circumstance cowers in the unperformed –

tasting, without pretence, nor confirmation,

whispering greatly,

opal veils of smoke –

tides, sweet, a constant

pain.

 

A pearl forms, a melting star  -

of curving universe locks,

 

born on the ever looping sail –

never held,  a well climb

or a fall –

th...

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Wednesday 28th March 2012 11:50 am

A Suggestion of Defence

by Marianne Daniels

To rest, deft pretence, to rest –

shear your gloves with the zoo

of most incompatible common sense,

to bark and howl and squawk with full obedience -

the kind you are.

Be it a room of peacock eyes, singed in the heat

where no open window grooms,

or the quiver rut of rabbit clots,

breathing tightly in a burrow -

know your gut and the great gulping sorrow

a...

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Wednesday 28th March 2012 10:15 am

The Hall

by Marianne Daniels

 

Come in from the cold,

declares the rare hour, here to the day of sleep,

coughing and creeping through the burnt violin strings -

 the hallway buckling to its knees, saying please

make me human, run your thoughts over my arms,

here I am - welcoming you on the stairs.

Her hair tied up on her head,

tendrils of tumbling bees,

sigh in the shift of a trapped w...

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Tuesday 27th March 2012 11:35 am

Catalepsy

by Marianne Daniels

 

It breaks the distance,

rinses itself through my chest –

the pulp of conscious, the pulse

I hold, the touch of speed, close to

 

the coast of him. I disappear –

lines scolded white light,

eyes pouring thick, flesh folded.

It runs the future of my spine.

 

I shake the distance – the colour

tasted, chattering, wordless,

a mouth armour -  and v...

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Monday 26th March 2012 12:51 pm

Needle

by Marianne Daniels

 

Falling through the sallow plague –

mine, all mine, the weather reminds,

left in your place,  jade veins shooting through

a gold - untouchable, never invaded,

stained all the same;

an infection of kisses and petals up my arm.

 

The coo –

the ribbon route, floats the infant, calm –

a sway of circles,

a dawn of cradles

and where we are, sobbing;

...

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Thursday 22nd March 2012 3:22 pm

The Candle Bends

by Marianne Daniels

Callous flame!  The wall beckons tardy shadows; an eye of minute distance

where time is spare to change the movement –

fingers twitching like the curve of a Count’s back,  black on the wall -

a great mountain of ash.

I have my all, bent, doubled, cold chattering teeth

and Poe stowed in the gaps of my window

where in creeps the moors, swabbed with a woman’s pulse.

 

...

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Wednesday 21st March 2012 4:15 pm

Ghosts

by Marianne Daniels

 

I have a corner of the room, held tight against my chest –

it is worn, the shark teeth of a blanket, a blue shadow sewn

in the dimness of drawn curtains.  

 

No one reaches.

                                                                                                                                     The stillness echoes, warms my eyelids from underneath the fold...

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Tuesday 20th March 2012 1:00 pm

She Reasons to Herself While Bathing

by Marianne Daniels

I do not know why I disappoint you  -

you – the netted heart, the captor of beautiful things,

sepulchre voices, where the dagger vex orgasm mourns,

spiriting away on the holding charm of a velvet spaced word.

 

I do not know why the fever goes to her – your ghost want

to power the colour, fresh and ripe, of her, being so untouched.

I have the blues...

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Thursday 15th March 2012 7:12 pm

The Authentic Heart

by Marianne Daniels

It is not a kind beat – the one that warms the colour of your eyes, the pupil gawping in a state of near hospitalization, draining the outside of all significance, for the life of it is in – in the pinnacle of unleash and the throb of completely knowing your lust; drag, animal, bated lush, tilted, and fruit injected, electric, hating like lover’s do.

It is the flick of blood and gun, the ru...

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Wednesday 14th March 2012 3:31 pm

Jude

by Marianne Daniels

 

He began –

generations of what should have been

in the palm of his hand; the creases of stone masonry and Christchurch,

better for the beaten, beaten for the man –

and crossed the river in her, the obscure

distances of chastity and love, the lulls of

a hidden blood –

an understanding, to the sore thought of what is lost

when all hope is gone, shackle snappe...

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Monday 12th March 2012 2:40 pm

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