Jam
Gentle tufts pulled rough
at the stem, unwind
in my left palm.
Hands swing
into bell petals, velvet
afternoon air.
Butter the sunset
in snatches, clouds
fold, rain
dusted glass.
A cowbell
rings low. Past lives
ripen: echo.
Kayleigh Jayshree is a poet and short story writer. She was IS&T’s July 2021 Pick of the Month and her poem was commended in the Young Poets Network ‘When a Friend Calls’ challenge. Kayleigh was a Member of the Roundhouse Collective, mentored by Cecilia Knapp and a 2021-2022 Apples & Snakes Writing Room Alumni taught by Dfiza Benson.
Her poems have also been published in The Cardiff Review, Butcher’s Dog, and Isele Magazine.
She is a member of The Writing Squad and joined in 2020.
IS&T internships run for 4 months each consecutively, and in order to go some way towards redressing the balance in publishing, will for the foreseeable future come from the Black, Asian, Latinx and others from the global majority (ethnic minority in the UK); we will almost certainly expand our searches to include other disadvantaged groups as our programme develops. More details are below.