by Helen Ivory | Mar 8, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
content warning: gynaecological examination Naming of Parts (after Henry Reed) Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday we had no idea they would need to be named. Two students avoid my...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 7, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Door I opened the door A girl stood there her blonde hair drifting in the wind She said My mother told me not to go to the mountains she said there is nothing to eat in the mountains and she said I will get lost in the mountains and I will slip...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 6, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Diaspora I lost both my lovely uncles one after the other to another country. Jubilantly they had passed their examinations and once equipped with white coats and certificates they poised to join the gloried institutions only to find corridors...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 5, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Melt If a white bear’s weight tilts the floe where once he stood in balance with the ice― If he opens himself to a barely discernible scent of seal but it drifts off like sleet― If a bear pads the asphalt of a seaside town sallowed by streetlight...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 4, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Without you I won’t believe in ghosts but the day after they told me you had died, I saw you everywhere we had been. Not there in that dark garden shed with me as I built a gate, that startlingly first bright day of early summer but in India, that...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 2, 2023 | Featured, Poetry
Paper Dolls She did well, my secret twin – kept us alive, deflected blows, absorbed each wound into our body, quiet as a tree. I didn’t notice her leave until the wind whistled in and a bird flew from my mouth. Later I unfolded myself like a chain...
