by Helen Ivory | Nov 5, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Fire You brought us unimagined warmth, roasted our arrow kill into the earliest carvery. The cave as ideal home. Trapped you behind glass, hoisted high on coasts & estuaries, let you jitterbug for boats to pinpoint anchorage. In your debt for...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 4, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Why Wyoming I spend a lot of my working hours daydreaming of Wyoming. I’ve never been to Wyoming, but I know the marshland smells prehistoric, and the foothills of the mountains run rugged and unpredictably through pinewood forests and streams...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 3, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Interrogation at the Womb Door (with a nod to Ted Hughes) Who goes there? Body and Soul. Anything else to declare? Before you pass through the eye of the needle, You can leave them in our tender care. We’re sending that equipment to the Centre of...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 2, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Devil’s bridge Follow me, tie your tongue and leave the words at the car. I know you want to say them but I need you to fill your lungs with my apologies, just breathe them in slowly. Find me amongst birch, alder and aspen. Help me grind myself into the...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 1, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
Easy This bed is gentle, soft, rocking. I am in utero. I lay upon the white ship, the sheets lap at my beard, easy living in the morning, easy in the afternoon. The bed is tied to my hair, it is knotted in a conch shell, it tethers me and licks my...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 31, 2019 | Prose & Poetry
The Parch Desert moves in. The coarse grain of swaddling skin loses grip as tributaries of blood, bones and their porous underpinning appear. This slow reveal of armature is beginning to tell. You can see it in everyone who entered this age before...
