by Helen Ivory | Nov 19, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Marianne North transports the tropics to Kew She packs the globe in a wooden box, ships it to London, shrinking each place she visits to the space between her hands then draws them apart like a conjuror nectaring sunbirds out of sable hair, butterfly...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 18, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Willow Woman After ‘The Huntress of Skipton Castle Woods’ by Anna & the Willow Pliant yet unyielding—there’s steel at my core— I’m fixed in the flex of blown breeze, leaf ripple. Hems besom discarded leaves, gathering them in as kin, and I’m...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 17, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Tetris We’re there on the midnight pavement with the amps and the guitars, the kit and the cables, remember, you and Drew and Tom and James and me, after that gig— instead of the bus the taxi driver turns up in this car like your mum’s and...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 16, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
A very small thing. I found your fingernail creased inside the poetry I read to you. A dry paring, thin crescent, white as a hospital tag, cut when you could still fight me, with your vowels and yelping, with the stricture of your hands. I...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 15, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Fumes Everyone goes to the harvest – men, women, and children leave at dawn, as soon as the fog changes colour. It’s safer then, but beyond the stockade, they still wear masks and gloves. Except for the woman at the front – her mouth is free. She...
by Helen Ivory | Nov 14, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Bear Bear, you’re a mouth that breathes while it chews and you spray your wisdom on bits of bread Bear you’re a man who lives fast and loose with a loneliness cavernous inside your head Bear can I ask you to eat your own tongue when you spy bought...
