by Helen Ivory | May 22, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
Deleting Footnotes You can never prepare for this task. It demands no passion in the wrecking, just obliterating all signals of existence throughout your dead parents’ house. Discovering now what you never knew, finding parts of what you came to be....
by Helen Ivory | May 21, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
Kennel A long night wrestling in the narrow bed, constrained and willing under the snuffed-out bulb. Breeze-block wall, tin sink, a locked door to the neon lit unshadowed corridor. We slept and woke, took it up again then you turned away. The...
by Helen Ivory | May 20, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
A Potion to Leave the Past Behind Take yoga breaths, pins, pressure points camomile, beta-blockers, diazepam fill the void with Jesus, Mars Bars and vodka fill it with l-o-v-e, hate and oxygen (Sing) You can’t turn back Only walk forward...
by Helen Ivory | May 19, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
breathless graffiti shouts insults from walls by the chemist its colours explode like flung bottles I stare at the pavement and I’m late for the 8:22 to Manchester because I should have left home at 7:55 but I had to fix the tap or attempt...
by Helen Ivory | May 18, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
Mate Choice You didn’t ask me to marry you in words, your arms thick as branches kept me to you. Blocking me in. I told you marriage was Darwin’s joke, dismissing us, what we could become. Pleased at how clever I was. We would have...
by Helen Ivory | May 17, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
The Day Before In the morning the house is quiet with sleeping sons, and a whole day stretches before me, taut between the pull of the garden, and the list of indoor tasks: preparation for fifteen for Easter Sunday lunch. All day I’m juggling,...
