Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.
Divorce
by Justin Quinn
Divorce - Justin Quinn
Divorce
You sleep there underneath
four squares of blue, your clay
dilating as you breathe,
oblivious to the day.
Which is birdsong, the slight
sea-noise of cars below,
serrated insect flight,
a chainsaw on the go
within a wooded ghyll,
working its way through
part of our world. These fill
the azure over you.
In it are sheens that pass,
the fleetest silverings
of sylph and self in glass,
as well as shadowings
suggesting foreign steppes
through walls of brick and ply,
or just weird tiny depths
in details of the sky.
It’s as if you’re lying under
the surface of the water,
as pictures join and sunder
of mother, wife and daughter.
When you wake up I see
the fathoms that you swam,
and your eyes ask of me
who on earth I am.
from Close Quarters (Gallery, 2011), © Justin Quinn 2011, used by permission of the author and the publisher