by Helen Ivory | Aug 24, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Blood Displaces Water Paola opens stitches on the cuff of her wrist. An efficient seamstress, she works on fine silver scars. She cuts with precision, but there’s danger in her strokes. She leans over the basin. A feather of pink...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 23, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Good Night Mum liked quiet children, silent bodies, no vomiting, no wheezing I knew how to breathe through an upset stomach but asthma came at night uninvited, a whistle-blower in my lungs telling my throat to snap shut. To avoid being kept awake...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 21, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Pavement Legs running, legs running to the far end Of the street, echoing stampede of feet After feet. Down again, up again, gather, Disperse. My sister comes over first. Others follow. A bike wheel skids up. The rider eying me like a dull pet,...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 20, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
I’m at a party somewhere in Brazil not the sit down one or the dancing one but the one where you’re stood up and the waiters come round and serve you little things on trays so you feel like some sort of posh giant when you eat them and...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 19, 2017 | 2017 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Mr. Wrong Can’t wear the red velvet skirt I love the hem won’t cover bruised knees, can’t talk—shouldn’t talk—to family don’t need them asking me again ‘why don’t you just leave?’ If the roast isn’t on the table at five o’clock sharp, then he’ll finish...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 18, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Gargoyles When their hearts and bodies ached, they imagined beings able to transcend toil only love made tolerable; and the hurt embryonic wings unfurling from sore shoulders reluctantly, like new Horse Chestnut leaves. More cloister bat than angel,...
