by Helen Ivory | Oct 16, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Forty (for Maryna) The first three days of war have a surprising holiday feel. No deadlines, just the giddy gasp of shock. Ordinary life continues. The girl in white socks in the flat downstairs plays a prelude then turns, pleased, to an audience...
by Elontra Hall | Oct 15, 2025 | Featured, Poetry, Word & Image
A zuihitsu of strings A zuihitsu of strings for Ying A lacquer table, gloss under fingertips. A raised stage with dark linen. A young woman smiles with her hand-held harp, its nine strings glistening. The room swells with the cadence of her pearly...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 15, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Conscience as taught her by the nuns was a bridle on a young girl’s tongue pony frolic legs a choke-hold on convolvulus excess seductive as leaves skittering over moon scatter grass dandelion pappus weighted with girlish longings a...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 14, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
A Memory Moves Me On (Teenage Years) Teenage years everything begins it never ends Berries shout my name at the fruit stall I hear a voice sing more than words, see the cross of his cheekbones, the shade of his hair. I save his image to a locked...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 13, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Minder Care is a state in which something does matter – Rollo May I didn’t know what to do with all my dad’s love so, I minded it for him fully intending to give it back one day. Thing is, that day never arrived, the time never seemed right and...
by Helen Ivory | Oct 12, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Testing the mettle Ther was no man, for peril, dorste hym touche. A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose. The Reeves Tale, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer. Such a knife, a real Et Tu Brute number. Bone handled, incisive. Decades of marriage had whetted...
