by Helen Ivory | Apr 7, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
The Examined Life of Dr. X O, former tennis-player! Your closet rasps with the bones of carbon-fibre skeletons where the leads of divorce-lost dogs hang – their slack ligaments – and noose your marriage muscle. O, maker of uncomfortable party guests! Your...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 6, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
A Clean White Shroud For Geoff Stevens Smoking still makes me dizzy. My mind wanders when I boil soup. Each pint of dark ale, raised: ‘Rage!’ See-through people play with broken poems on the other side, banging their fists like cocaine hearts. I hear rising chords,...
by Kate Birch | Apr 5, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
Waiting for Bluebeard The child in the garden wears a coat collaged from the skins of paper, sutured with lengths of my hair. I am inside the house in a matching coat. There is no one to tell us not to; called here, as we were by the halloo of peacocks who turned...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 2, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
Gran’s Staircase Her voice was ringing in my ears. I was Violet Elizabeth Bott, screaming and the burnt pan stood, unwashed, on the draining board. She’d go to and fro through the shop door or into the kitchen and, halfway up the stairs, I’d be watching. In that house...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 31, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
A World After Proverbs Where there is plenty, take plenty; Where there is little, take it all. – Irish proverb When the hour drew Motholoch to Rathlin, breasting the signal from Marconi’s ribs in Ballycastle, she rode the Sea’s Swallow on a dulse raft...
by Ivory Web | Mar 30, 2012 | Prose & Poetry
House Party About 3am we were awoken by a strange voice in our bedroom, voices actually, a conversation, several people tiptoeing up the stairs and something being dragged, thunking on the stairs as it went. I reached over and turned on the light and saw a large head...
