Rob Miles
Zones of Exclusion
Hold it lightly between your thumb and index finger so that the pin slides slightly with each application, asking, “What do you feel?”
Where do we reckon
the deadening
starts?
Is it below
the navel, or somewhere
above
the heart?
What test could serve
beyond the neural
byways, the pins
in maps
of connection
or inaction, gathering
where paths
have numbed,
at which points
whole parts of us become
closed down to others?
Rob Miles is based in Yorkshire. Recent poems have appeared in Ambit, The Interpreter's House, South Bank Poetry, Angle, Lunar Poetry and The Anthology of Age (The Emma Press). He’s won international competitions including the Philip Larkin 2014, judged by Don Paterson. Other poems have been placed, commended or shortlisted in competitions including the Bridport, Wenlock, Gregory O’Donoghue, York and Ilkley literature festivals, and three times in the National Poetry Competition.
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Militant Thistles