by Helen Ivory | Oct 19, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Clinical Waste For Bev At boarding school, I had no idea what to do with myself. Most of the time, I hid myself in a paper bag, under my bed, amongst my wash things, beneath my towel and a clean nightie. There were no bins provided and we were given...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 18, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Entropy The margin of the world is blurred – a pale band of light, where sky fades into sea. I arrange my books in order of height, on a bank of cow parsley, amid the random oscillations of a cool breeze and one bee, among the buttercups and...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 17, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
HG I know others blossom but I vomit ectoplasm, and squaring the corners of my bed, the nurse reminds me I’m not dying. I’m just expecting an alien that feeds on my nerves because I’m not even exaggerating how much her old school air is grating on...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 16, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Matred After the medieval “Noah plays” of Chester, York and Towneley. Noah’s wife is traditionally not named in religious texts. The name Matred comes from a novel by Madeleine L’Engle. It is known: a woman like that brings evil on board. Look at...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 15, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
In the Café Did anybody actually (most of all, me) think I could write here? At a trestle table, notebook blotting crumbs (fast hardening to glue), leftovers of a cartoon transfer, vermilion-tipped cactus tramping down the radio. Heat on the...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 14, 2024 | Featured, Poetry
Wrapping Up You have buried your mother and put a memorial bench on a high hillside where the wind blows sunsets straight through and it’s always better to wear something warm. A great walker, your mother. Cities, holloways, rugs by cradles. As...
