by Helen Ivory | Dec 29, 2014 | 12 days 2014
With Persimmon Little things catch in my throat at Christmas: noticing more cracked mugs, the concrete corner of our kitchen which is still unlinoed; the matchsticks that still prop white tiles. At the table, I lose tally of our daily...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 28, 2014 | 12 days 2014
Submission Instead of a short poem a sonnet say or a villanelle I’m writing a very long one perhaps about Christmas perhaps not forged out of iron words and irony and when I send it to you Helen it will arrive not by email but stashed on a big...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 27, 2014 | 12 days 2014
Unlucky numbers On the first day of X-mas a kid-gang brought to me a mirror printed with the reflection of supermarket special offers, half-price happiness. I scrubbed at that mirror till my arm ached. On the second day the sun played...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 26, 2014 | 12 days 2014
They Said They said so many untrue, unkind, unfair Cruel things behind my back And later on even to my face – Always three or four of them, At least, better to make their point … Afraid, more like, on their own, I might for once have made other use Of my...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 25, 2014 | 12 days 2014
Nikolaos the Wonderworker Asthmatic pipe smoker, gift giver, you wear a crown of holly fixed on your Medusa strands, beard of clouds stuck fast on top of wire. A pile off of the tinker’s cart in the crook of your arm resting on your cauldron...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 24, 2014 | 12 days 2014
Advent service Three o’clock and the hall is a collapsed lung. Candles glow through a fug of Lynx and condensation. God is with us. He is ready for a song. The boys in the back row are weary. They have writhed through the rituals of celebration and now...
