selection from Babysham
(if read aloud, do so in a gentle, quiet voice of a girl who is still afraid of the dark)
On loving
You are concerned with being a monolith. With being
a museum. Poster board, boy chested, nailed
to a crucifix by water lilies. Waterlogged symbols
of girlhood. You wished for a mother to preserve
your untouched body in resin. She rewards
your unmottled skin with cold-lipped kisses.
Its unbecoming to marry a brandy boy, a sailor
left shipless. He cannot look to you even now
as you imagine yourself among the soft girls
constructed entirely of clouds. Whose
lips have never known the warmth
of sex, of cliche sins. He blows your body of glass,
Forms a functional cannon to take aim. Hits the horn
of a herald; buries the building in snow.
Sabine Wilson-Patrick is a fiction and poetry writer originally from Barbados. Her poetry circles themes of homesickness, anticipatory grief and how girlhood drags into your 20s. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of The Tonic Review, a literary magazine for emerging writers and writers with a connection to Wales, as well as Rover Magazine, an arts and culture outlet for people of colour. Her work can be found in Folding Rock, Midnight & Indigo, Nawr and Ethereal Magazine. Find her digital portfolio here: https://sabinewp.carrd.co/
Word & Image from Sabine was previously published on IS&T here.
She will be with us from July through October 2026. To find out how to submit poetry prose, word & image, filmpoems and reviews to her please check out our submissions page here.
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). More details via the link below.