by Helen Ivory | Jul 12, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
What Becomes Of The Absent-Minded? our houses smell of burned apples and pine forests dripping through ceilings we carry sausages from room to room with a feeling that somebody wrote a song about us we light ovens and cook emptiness...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 11, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
A lie must not advertise itself. Dreaming a word I woke: Encomium? There was no one about and I looked. Maybe I was grateful for waking from sleep again or just from sleep. A fool’s freedom. Both. All. Time now looked like a door. But behaved like a...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 10, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
Alien As there are one hundred thousand million stars in our galaxy, and one hundred thousand million galaxies, I would expect some variety. But the astronomer affected surprise when she informed a marvelling journalist that two planets, recently...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 9, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
Testing, Testing I awoke sweating like a A. Mormon at an anti-bigamy conference. B. farmer facing down a rabid donkey. C. truck driver steering his semi down an icy road. I assumed I’d had a nightmare, but I couldn’t remember anything. It...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 7, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
Uffizi Florence,Spring 2006 We lounge in the 8.30 am queue watching the marbled living statues for so long, we grow bored and speak instead of how quickly the tourists stride across the piazza, how determined they are to tick off the must-see, must–snap...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 5, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
Quicklime A tanker is carrying quicklime and hits a lamppost in Ashfield at 19:00. You are watching TV in Ashfield. It is 19:00. Quicklime. Freshman biology slides off the tight- ropes of your synapses like sand. Quicksand. You are no longer in Ashfield....
