by Helen Ivory | Jan 4, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Locked Out The sun burned orange and its touch Deepened from a careless brush To a firm hold And only you Could hear its groans As it dragged its curtain down the sky The red brick blocks Lining your street Darkened to red wine teeth And you sat...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 21, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Skinny-dipping Naked, unseen and alone; a belligerent bullfrog, I squat among reed-mace, amidst a fog of grey gnats. Watching the water for whirlpools, heartbeat, steady as a millstone. Step by step, I enter my element at a somnambulist’s pace....
by Helen Ivory | Dec 20, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Rivers of Switzerland My geography teachers are dead: their mountains, forests, oxbow lakes, the small hands that could squeeze the life out of anything. Even the student with the boots she said were crocodile is terminal moraine now, like my...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 19, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
The Night, the Possum Giant starry sky night behind an illegal beach shack in a rickety add-on caravan he calls Steptoe’s Castle, broken window wedged open for cooler air, a possum squeezes its way inside, his bed adjacent. He stirs, wind a banshee,...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 18, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
When I die When I die, I want it to be just slowly enough that I can leave something to those I cherish: my recipe for chipotle sauce, a lily or two, perhaps some worldly pith on love, or booze. When I die, I want it to be just slowly enough that...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 17, 2017 | 2017 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Salt ‘n’ Oats This could help you live forever: warm the water in a milk pan, add your oats, stir in salt, let it rest. Take breakfast in the woods: listen to the birds, find a house ridden with hair. Test the beds. Should you be woken, run. Don’t...
