by Helen Ivory | Sep 30, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Mauvaise Foi They instruct me to walk from the skyline to the centre of the city, just as I did years ago. The film they made of me then has faded to the point where it can no longer be restored. The challenge with this new film, they say,...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 29, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
In walks Randle He tells me his name is R P McMurphy. He has a pleasing air of dissidence but bears no resemblance to Jack Nicholson and Hollywood stars don’t have Leeds accents. It didn’t take him long to settle in: he pulled a pack of cards out...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 26, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Patio Writing Did I not see the old sign lurking in the novelty store of my mind? EPIPHANIES XING, it warned, or it could have been a promise — yet I paid it no heed, and kept on falling asleep and waking up at the expected times, coming out under...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 25, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Hop Picking Dickens sees bodies wet in the hedges, hop dust is believed to cure consumption. Eden Phillpotts, writing in 1916, starts with sunshine and deft fingered girls. By the 1930s and Orwell it’s blood all over the fingers and chaff in the...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 24, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
Return They used to hang bodies over the black-water creek; picked bodies of picked men, their entrails pulled by the birds in greedy jerks. The dead glass eyes watching over and out to the waves and the clouds: or with a twist of wind, or the...
by Helen Ivory | Sep 23, 2018 | Prose & Poetry
A Concert at the Doge’s Palace with Fans I’m chased by airbnb on facebook, instagram, twitter, Ebay, there is its fluttering gif, checking me out, even on booking.com, which is perverse. I search for Palladium, Copernicum, Moscovium. £98 a...
