by Helen Ivory | Nov 28, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
I Praise the Spider I At the web’s dead centre, a thumbprint smudge in your secret heaven tucked beneath an overhang of leaves and hung about with jewels and corpses baby-faced mummies, the empty sacks of your children, trembling as if with a...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 27, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Thunder Under London It was there a silver stratocaster making no sound the air had a bleak purr I picked up the neck and plucked a shape Oh blare! the ringing sweet of that strung gap music meat to this hollow old world I played and I flung I...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 26, 2019 | 2019 poetry picks, prizes and awards, Prose & Poetry
End Forget you. The ash of bone. The uncradled heart, leaky valve long scorched. Forget the unthinking arm that fell on my shoulder, those times we crossed the M6 flyover and you drove with one hand on the wheel and I’d change gear, rather badly....
by Helen Ivory | Nov 25, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
The late blackberries The late blackberries come ripe this year, bursting little beasties slick with the devil’s spit. We come home gorse pricked and spittle flicked and happy for the yearning. Keep your high-rise monoliths. I apologise- I truly...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 24, 2019 | 2019 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Ague When it comes, it will scratch away the surface of Fen, release the secrets of our soil. It will sing its lullaby over a girl’s bones at the bottom of a village well. Its tongue will rouse small forms to hatch in the eyes of a dying mare. It will...
