by Helen Ivory | Mar 25, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Reviews
Alice Allen’s first collection Daylight of Seagulls takes the occupation of Jersey during WW2 as its subject, but she weaves so much more. In her vivid introduction she tells us that she grew up there in the 70’s and 80’s. ‘ we weren’t taught about the...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 24, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Bus Stop Etiquette We roll up piecemeal, shuffled rush-hour pack in all weathers; fix envious glares into underoccupied kerbcrawl cars blaring rock, pop, classical, duh-duh-duh dance and dumbass ads. It’s Britain so we queue; eyecontactless, heads...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 23, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Snowdrift From solitude to servitude I went: a stepmother’s bane, to maid-of-all-work for grubby curmudgeons. dust sweep scrub sleep How the chores call to me, a broom-brush song that bristles at my hearing’s edge. How grudgingly I...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 22, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
A Sudden Shaft of Light My demented mother who doesn’t know me anymore, looks up as I come into the room. Ach – there’s my wee darling Moyra she says, such love in her voice that everything falls away but love. The slate is clean, and I, new...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 21, 2020 | Featured, Poetry
Lullaby for the Child I Will Never Have Sometimes, in my dreams, I sing to you of mice running up the clock, of four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. I love you too much for fledglings severed by magpies: I found a chick once – feathers...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 20, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Sunday Dress Ileana loved to make clothes. Afternoons after school she sat at my worktable, arranging patterns like jigsaw pieces to fit a length of fabric. These skills I taught her, daughter of my daughter, because her mother was not around to...
