by Helen Ivory | Feb 27, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Levertov’s Ladder Leaving, she saw them eat Her words –and The left-over gravy In that re-devised tumbled Down shack Where The hawk-weed Grows but doesn’t erase The colour Of absence –or The stony telling There by A turnstile gate As she,...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 26, 2017 | 2017 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Damp The damp that squats in gritstone hearts of two-bed terraces. The stumble of rooftops polished dark as funeral brogues. The promiscuity of green, having its way with every crack and hole, every startled moss that punks from rock and stump....
by Helen Ivory | Feb 24, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Patience Here, the cat is a rosebud on the corner of the bed. Here, I lie still, swallowing air, as the sun paints squares on the walls around me. Here, I dream only of trees; there is wallpaper pasted on the wets of my eye lids. Here, the earth...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 23, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
The Absence of Birds The leaves rustle releasing a surprised sparrow, thrushes answer one another, the red kite static above my head, I trace the magpie’s undulating flight and hear rooks call from distant trees. Then silence. I think about the absence of...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 21, 2017 | 2017 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Two Attempts at a Theory of History All I want to say Is that perhaps history Means the striking of a match In a doorway to protect the flame From half-hearted sleet or mizzling rain. Or, seen another way, What history represents Is a choir of the...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 20, 2017 | Prose & Poetry
Suspicious Nouns She tells him that she loves him. She tells him that she feels bad. She tells him that she feels bad because she’s cheating on her boyfriend with him. She wonders if he suspects her. She tells him that if she found out that he was...
