by Helen Ivory | Jul 20, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Cunning These things I know, and in knowing, can do; I am able, and my ability like my anatomy is deceitful. Canniness is seeing illusion not sin in the tip of the tongue the curve of the eye; the bodies like mine whipped for their wits. It is...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 19, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
The Stopping Thing after Wanda Coleman You wrestle the car seat’s five-point harness, scrabble for a foothold in the new life. The baby has thin hair and flaky skin like age — this daughter dished up fresh out of my body to gaze clear-eyed at air....
by Helen Ivory | Jul 18, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
We Need to Talk about Shoes The right shoes for work, party, funeral. The right shoes for 2023, with heels not worn down last century, like sister Jo’s shit-brown Mary Janes, passed on by Aunt Jess in pristine pasteboard box. Each clipped step,...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 17, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Grandad keeps pigeons and canaries in the same cage. He has never hurt me. He probably could, so I follow, skipping moss stuffed cracks in the concrete path, the bolt is secured with wire, the padlock hangs uncoupled. Green paint patchworks the...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 16, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
In stream (after Zaffar Kunial’s ‘This in Land’) That way a river crimps eddies in its skin is this matter of my unreliable breath. That way leaves spin, pause, spin on again is as much constancy as we should expect. That way an eel suspended in...
by Helen Ivory | Jul 15, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Birdsong You’d come in the front door and whistle, I’d be upstairs and whistle back like a pair of tits sounding a return to the nest, our intuitive call and response, a sudden shared slap stick rousing the dog from its daydream, like two trainee...
