by Helen Ivory | Dec 2, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
A Town of Shadows Ashington I was born in a town of shadows. The shadow of the black bridge, where boys would crawl, hand by hand, under rails in Beeching’s gaze, cheating teenage death by drop into the lazy Wansbeck. The shadow of the Charltons,...
by Helen Ivory | Dec 1, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Crushed She was only a little woman five feet nothing in nylon stockings. If I stood sideways they’d mark me absent. Lightweight in her youth the heaviness came later. See what you did to me she’d say, scar stretching red across her belly, this is...
by Fathima Zahra | Nov 30, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
The Language of Inflections When she said ‘could’, it was clearly in italics and when she said ‘one day’, the creak of glaciers shuddered around its edges. The way she said ‘yes’ was a stone dropping down a bottomless well. When he said ‘trust...
by Fathima Zahra | Nov 29, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
ice cream under the sun the days are long but the years are short. seconds are tiny kitchen knives in my back. i stopped reading Dickinson, her voice is a sad parrot. i often imagine myself drowning in her punctuated chaos. the grass is...
by Fathima Zahra | Nov 28, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
BECAUSE When she is toddling small, she learns to hear real good because she cannot see. Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice- cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to...
by Fathima Zahra | Nov 27, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Lesson A cell, an upright piano. Sentence, one hour. I’ve never shown any interest in music, never tapped out thumps on the dining table, stamped out beats in my scrappy shoes or hummed silly tunes. The teacher is an old spindly man. Grim, out of a...
