by Helen Ivory | Jun 6, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
An Escape In the back room’s desiccated atmosphere, the spiders stole one another’s shoes and sang their clever songs with their elbows folded. The shelf of hats stood to stiff attention, three coal black and a female in splendid blue that came...
by Helen Ivory | Jun 3, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Charity shop crawl I start in Scope, find my first Kiss T-shirt from the Lick it Up tour, the old black now charcoal grey, a seven inch tongue lost to too much Persil. In Shelter, I find my leather jacket, purchased from an alternative clothing...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 28, 2020 | Featured, Poetry, Prose
Under Fire The job I needed. The job that contempted me. The job on a Loyalist housing estate in a blank end-terrace house, a crime scene smeared clean. The house impossible to hearten or heat. The job that started each day with lighting a fire...
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...
