Kandace Siobhan Walker

---

---

Awareness of Position and Movement

In memory of Elijah McClain

Blue morning buries headlights. Heading home?
Three bodies birthed suddenly by the world of the world.
I circumnavigate with music, dampens the world’s
slow-motion explosive debris. I said, heading home, are we?
Humming in my chest. Realise: questions
in three police vests means stop. Means move
slowly, carefully, means goodnight. Excuse me,
I’m talking to you. Requirement to speak. Silence
belongs in the earth. I wish I had had a great love.
I wish I had developed a deeper dream of love.
Swimming through the world of sense, butterfly strokes
through ocean trash, back to the world of body, of speech.
Where are you coming from? My lips, my tongue,
my vocal tract are in the world of bodies, but I am wherever
I am when I am at the mercy of the world of perception.
Now I am in handcuffs. Now I am in a van.
Now I am menstruating in a cell.
Now I am blinking on the alley behind my flat, and
during this detainment the sun has risen
like a burning violin.

---

---

---

---

KANDACE SIOBHAN WALKER is a writer and artist. She is the author of Cowboy (CHEERIO, 2023) and Kaleido (Bad Betty Press, 2022). Her installation Dreamerism is currently part of the exhibition Survey III, led by Southwark Park Galleries and supported by Jerwood Arts. She lives in London.