by Helen Ivory | May 8, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Monkey Mathematics A monkey grabs one nut here, one nut there, and two more over there. He counts them with care. One two three four nuts —what a bounty! He rubs his belly, opens the nutshells deli- cately and eats the seeds oh-so- slowly: four...
by Helen Ivory | May 7, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Self-Portrait at 30 – VIII. Be reasonable I find six errors in the proofreading manual & the irony doesn’t tickle me. I am enraged by typos, poor formatting, missing commas. This is my Big Girl Job, the one I always wanted — editing...
by Helen Ivory | May 6, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Consulting the Doctor What seems to be the problem ? He asks in that slightly condescending tone. Seems, I think, Seems. It seems, I say, that I have a problem with my inner fish, or my inner fish has a problem with me. My Eustachian...
by Helen Ivory | May 5, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Consistency My Dad once dismissed a friend as a hypocrite, which I took to be an induction to the truth. Lately though, I think the things I love in you I love because they’re grossly inconsistent. Your signature smell is rose, your delicate petal...
by Helen Ivory | May 4, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Everything We are eating dessert when the urge overcomes her to scrawl mathematics, the night ticks on —I drink my whisky, her Merlot grows warm— until, sudden-smiling, she holds out a paper: a simple equation with nothing crossed out; laid out...
by Helen Ivory | May 3, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Ay Anneanne After The Moon Woman (1942) by Jackson Pollock Ay Dede is what the moon was called in the bedtime stories I was told as a child who at the time had no idea that the moon could never be anyone’s grandpa, no matter what Turkish...
