by Helen Ivory | Apr 17, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
The Debussy Bus Stop Everything breaks sooner or later: keys, kettles, musical boxes, the clay hare on the mantelpiece. Out of habit, I carry the keys for all the houses I’ve left behind, and though I no longer remember which would fit...
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...
