by Helen Ivory | Sep 1, 2015 | Prose & Poetry
The Quail Sophia immerses the podgy quail into a pot of hot water and then starts plucking them. Tufts of brown feathers blanket the water. She then cuts their heads off with the kitchen scissors. ‘It’s Rex that caught them out in the...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 31, 2015 | 2015 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
Itch Stacks of National Geographics filled the wardrobe to my waist. The dust inviting sneezes. Misaligned yellow spines. Careless visitors would toss them back any old way. My fingers would itch to restore their rightful order. Oh...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 30, 2015 | Prose & Poetry
Panic Attacks They’re like swallowing rust. The tongue tries to be a shield, but the bed explodes. The best bet is avoiding the avalanche of thought by forcing a monk mind set or—what I do—just jumping off the cliff so...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 29, 2015 | Prose & Poetry
Erasures I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It’s the invisible enemy. — Richard Diebenkorn He made this image (carved it and smoothed it over) expressing it by marks in his mind; wordly and...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 29, 2015 | Prose & Poetry
Argument Then, your quiet scrubbing shoulders as bats fly past outside like broken plates. I unpeel fish spines, scrape away the skin and sticky flakes. Our lists are done, the kitchen’s clean, but the cloying...
by Helen Ivory | Aug 28, 2015 | Prose & Poetry
All I Could Steal From Bidston to Belfast I traced the line of you: Said my goodbyes despite the gale, imagined your head, bobbing with the current through secret shippingforecast zones as my heart grabbed at imaginary cordage that...
