by Helen Ivory | Mar 29, 2017 | 2017 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
My grandmother teaches me Her flat swings through the mirrored door and we are wafted with mothballs. Her nylons hiss when she crosses her legs. Her shoes are mauve, with little heels. I trawl my fingers in the deeps of the rug, stir talcum...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 28, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Pilates Retreat to Amazonia In focus – the edges of things – Like wiry mangroves, I contract to my toes imitating branches crooked bends. A backbreaking stance fixed there, melded in the earth while an aroma of poisonous fungus whistles through my...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 27, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
On a bus to LA Our pulse quickens, we get ever closer, as if by a conjurer’s hand, lanes multiply. Cars, RVs, trucks with mirror-silvered cabs power on past. In the distance planes are sucked through sunrays into LAX others spat out into the...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 26, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Mum’s Visit The quilt’s growing across the floor you say as we drive up the A1. The scenery’s your evenings at home: checking the phone for messages, drawing curtains. The silence. Then it’s your dad who ran away to Mansfield with Aunty Mab, whose...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 25, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
When I Return to London It asks me how long I can hold my breath for I tell the city, that I invented drowning That I knew the ocean when it was only limbs / not yet a body That could not swallow Only spit or spray I tell London, that I knew the...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 24, 2017 | 2017 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Five Compression Poems – from special effects one look at her face | her eyes her blue tattoos | she steps onto no man’s land takes a deep breath & touches the hearts of last week’s stripped & searched cosmic-brokers of dreams |...
