by Kate Birch | Mar 8, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Anger in Ladies &c . . .makes a beauteous face deformed and contemptible. . . and separates Roses and Lilies, by quite removing one or the other out of the Ladies cheeks . . . (The Ladies’ Dictionary John Dunton 1684) The ladies...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 6, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Saxifrage Her laconic neighbour uproots a mound of wildflowers. He buries bulbs within a copestone circle, gritting the soil so they will not rot in wet. He empties his glass after digging. This slow labour his way to word what can’t be...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 5, 2019 | 2019 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
[Beard of Bees] somewhere beneath my jaw hides a queen sleeping her tender buzz hums keep me awake I buzz pull out her children inspect their bodies plump and still wings gossamer thin I ...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 4, 2019 | 2019 poetry picks, Prose & Poetry
A long-distance voice That was the last time he called me by my name. His voice low, rather hoarse. Here and there, he paused; his speech slow, affecting a sadness I wasn’t to know. Long-distance call. Not unexpected. The usual. When will you...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 3, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Death-Winter February 1963 It is the year the poet died and we are soon to leave the town. Against the stage-set of raucous rooks whose interminable chatter gives them information before the rest of us, heart-to-hearts, cacophonous, the gossips are out....
by Helen Ivory | Mar 2, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Poem as Parasite A dark image, close as if the reader’s own, lets the poem bite. It feeds in the night begins to swell until it sees a future for itself, growing through a sonnet sequence, growing long and filling out, growing to a neo-epic fit to...
