𝑥 once said
poetry is the secret-
ion of the self,
a star drawn
through the body like silver wire.
But the I
and you are nothing:
love and the ghost
of love
bright and hygienic
as angels.
Magpies thread the sky
with song and memory–
starless blue-dark
I pass
between like Lazarus.
I think
of the man I sat next to on the train
with the bruised arm,
the arm of many colours.
What rainbows the body bleeds.
How the canopies of myth
erase our names.
To hear a reading of ‘Valentine’s Day’, click below
Daniel’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Griffith Review, Westerly, Island, Overland, Cordite, Voiceworks, Going Down Swinging, The Suburban Review and Cicerone Journal’s anthology, These Strange Outcrops. His Honours thesis was awarded the 2023 ANU Gender Institute Prize. He was longlisted for the 2023 Griffith Review Emerging Voices Competition and is the recipient of the 2024 Faber Academy Writing a Novel Online Scholarship, where he is developing his debut novel, supported by a Create NSW grant.
Sunder is proudly supported by City of Melbourne Arts Grants.
