by Helen Ivory | Feb 7, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Drunken Roses The curtains’ psychedelic pattern is the only touch of sunshine in this flat. Beyond them, two artificial moons radiate tumours in the cemented garden and the city’s carrot bricks are prison walls pinching the sky. Inside, heads...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 5, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Hollow Years What carves away the insides? Here, inside the apple tree, each trunk is rotted out, hollowed through. The emptiness kept growing when we weren’t looking. Now everything hangs on a shell of bark. Though somehow the tree seems to carry on, keeps...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 4, 2018 | 2018 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry, Word & Image
Dummies We ride the escalators in pairs upwards past the plastic palms, the static rapids. Our flawless skin shines blue in the half-light, the smell of palma violets hangs in the air. We dare not speak, nor touch, for fear of waking the blinking eye...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 3, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Demonstration On that visit to you dying I was bleeding one last time before it stopped, a last egg so that you who wanted me fleshless childless would sniff out my woman’s smell who wanted me to stay anorexic making it plain that I could, had,...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 2, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
rose ii a collage from james cameron’s titanic jack this is where we met at first it felt like we were flying my heart was pounding the whole time jack put your hands on me when the ship docks i’m getting off with you and if...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 1, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
You Can Hear the Screws Go In You can hear the screws go in, forcing a way through, crushing resistance as they penetrate, a few squeaks as they tighten up. It’s safe now, locked down; you’ve put the lid on it. But listen: Inside it still rattles....
