The recovery position may need to be used in many conditions that need first aid
such as unconsciousness.
Health At Home - Your Complete Guide to Symptoms, Solutions, and Self-Care, Don R. Powell. American Institute for Preventive Medicine, 1996.

viscosity of that summer:
each drowning, bars 

of gulped new snow 
light, honey in a jar.

how do I explain morning, the everyness
of waking, each uncomfortable miracle?

tongue this snowflake
& talk of sugar

caffeine, anxiety, the long dark -
all that conspires to keep us

from sleeping
near another's sleeping

face, back,
arms, blurring in pre-dawn

tears. a monster ate this room
and you felt nothing.

i am nothing but suck,
a mouthed skelter of boneshard breathing

pulped into rawness 
i will mesh tomorrow from,

chewing through strands 
stuck in teeth

& waiting 
for the celery-

snap of bones
setting
 
 

we are all bones 
or walls 

of transparency,
of shuddering inwards,

huddled to flints of darkness, we
eat with ice picks, wash with vodka

between our legs and our mouths
are so, so open you can catch a glimpse of sunset

voluptuous reds bleeding through fingers
over eyes, playing hide-the-baby to the ragtime

of the scissor-man stride. have sucked my thumb
to sores, a rain of blood and plague of frogs

because first-born, the basket-child,
cribbed in glass and wires

is television, screaming bloody murder
in black and white and inside
 
 

only inside I am more Russian dolls 
than there are Russians, unsanded inside

I splinter to the touch &
suck your finger

lips a light socket the 
blackout blew my mind

a sudden November sky
wide, ladybird flying 

the red-eye to 
what she cried for:
 
 
 

there are swathes or distances I pull
my breath through, star-breath,

gasped by each limb at the tumble from sleep
at every silence, dog-sigh, moonlight,

each star a beating heart
against my eardrum,

a flashbulb inside my chest
arrests the clock at 3 a.m. & nothing moves

but there are things falling
inside me, tumblers

clicking
unsafe

someone picking 
at my locks,

peeling like old photographs,
plaster scabbed with tack

we pick at and pick at
last year's dust under our nails

this summer's glass shard in my heel,
on sheer nerve I walk

through walls
that harbour fire

waiting for a breath
your camera

fists at, clutching that old lie 
(my face) inside
 
 

stop: open wide
you are all aperture 

all slide and limber
you are five

going on fifty, old-eyed, book-nosed
you tell stories

(you do not yet lie
awake, waiting for the lightning

to set you on fire, rain to drown
your cries. you do not yet

self-dramatise) on uncles' knees
in a pretty-please dress 

and pleated socks,
cuts on ankle bones.

you know the grind, the drill,
its bit already 

between your teeth,
its high, dentist whine

a rictus song
of words you spit 

out, chips of white
in bloody water 

crack and clink 
like ice in whiskey
 
 

that childlike, toothless,
smiling, pulpy loss,

the bloody mess of it
somehow so obvious

when after the fact
each cut, each bruise

fits the pattern and not
just skin - the ooze

of words resists
its own insistent proof

its silence on that
necessary rhyme, useless 

as eyes 
averted from abuse
 
 

 

The working thought of you is like the stops of speech:
Memory, metre, power, grief, and health.
Having left you, I shall never have you lose me.
Inalterable silence, drop of hell.

Vahni Capildeo, "Silence Poem III: Orpheus" in No Traveller Returns.

a gutted fish, left open to the saline
sting and welcoming

its corrosion with each synapse
dulled by drinks 

and fingering books stuffed in 
ears not listening

through earphones pressed close and loaded
as tranquiliser darts

when, descending, subway chaos swims 
with this fear of falling

not far enough, and wanting underground to be 
what I have heard it sings

with: Eurydice moment on the narrow stair,
she all gill and fin,

agasp at this new element until his turning round,
her turn