by Helen Ivory | Dec 21, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Three tanka from Staithes This busy half-hour — a heron has come and gone, gauzy fog grown dense, rising tide of afternoon gained an inch against my boot * On the darkened beach, lamplight from a single room in a bungalow cut loose on the...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 20, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Nicolas Flamel and the Parisian Housewives The grocer calls, ‘Madame?’, sees what her eyes tell him, what sorcery her order implies: a palimpsest in the marbling of the ham, a skeleton of magic inside the roast lamb. He slices his goods on a...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 19, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Cola and Kvass Napoleon was here, the tour guide says. Distant forests shine copper and gold; the churchyards have plastic bouquets on each grave; a skinhead in combats gets off a bus, holding a bag from Lidl. We are crossing the European Plain, we read...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 18, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Aqua Alta It started as often before: water, creeping through doors, pushed in by wind and tide, flooded the lower floors. Venetians, grimly stoic, waded to work as dawn broke cold and yellow; waded through ruined books, shoes and baby clothes, or...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 17, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Face Shades with The Moon It came to me as a vision out from the winter cold, to my belief I find it to be real. On a night with the moon pale as the river dipped in silver ink. Before is the forest bared to soot and ash reek numb and loneliness,...
