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...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 10, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Consequences of proper litter disposal You barely notice the ubiquitous white and black of a gull passing overhead. You stumble on. One pint too many, tonight; four’s fine, but after five you feel it. You burp, delicately. On a bin ahead another...
by Helen Ivory | Mar 3, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Three halves Help yourselves, Alex says, places chocolate on the table, and opens the wrapper, silver wings on all four sides. Three of them, at one end of the table. Charlie cracks a chunk free, one whole end of the bar at a jaunty angle, and...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 5, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Neutropenic
I enter through the airlock, wearing a blue paper gown, hands still damp. There’s a low window which gapes incredulously at concrete slabs with weeds oozing between them, a bare tree, an after-thought of grass. Beside the window, an...
by Helen Ivory | Feb 2, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
John At the Food Lion south of town, at the express checkout, the clerk’s name pin reads “John.” In his thirties, thin, in black pants and a blue polo shirt, the store uniform, John has a shaved head and a scar that runs from his left ear up over...
by Helen Ivory | Jan 24, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Even better than the real thing You invited me to your flat. You looked ever so pleased with yourself. Your flat was a part of an older building near the park which had a beautiful lake in the middle of it, you wouldn’t think that we were in...
