Love Poem

Your ringtone woke me early, not with
urgent news, not to share how twelve-hour
shifts in the bleak warehouse erode you,
not for favours or need. You rang to say

how a young male sparrowhawk shot
up the river to where the blackbird sang,
killed it, let it thud on the grass, left,
then came back to collect and eat it.

No eulogy of a raptor’s steel skill,
no elegy for the prey. Then you rang off
and I was a colour chart of overthink:
longbow-body in flight, sickle claws,

candle flame beak, a song snuffed out,
a scribble of feathers on grass and blood –
and you, sharp-eyed, wired to a world beyond
people, letting me in for a minute – then gone.

L’Ivrogne

He let the Bacchic ivy take root
in the dregs of this yard. Noose tight
on doors and windows, it chokes the locks.
Its moth breath fouls the air. Straying fingers
slip under pebbledash, rub powdered bricks.

ivy pulls its snood over resin warts
on the cherry tree, prises open fence slats.
Its umbels dangle from loose drain-pipes.
Waxy leaves plaster the concrete,
where wheelie bins lie in a spew of cans.

The ivy is drunk; most nights he is too.
He made it the villain of the piece, stripping
off black gloss paint to ruddy undercoat.
She grips her bright-eyed secateurs.
A first small clip. He necks another pint.

Sligo Therapy

The hills are horse
heads, rubbing
noses over valleys

their bay coats
warmed by leaf
green blankets,

not just green, but
forty-two ways
of growing green.

A lone crow is an
eyelash on the sky’s
plumped pillows

The lough looks solid
as cement, holding
the hills in place.

Unafraid of tides,
the trees foam over
the water’s edge

soft as fur trim.
Stone farms are
sewn neatly into

the tough fabric
of this world,
firm as duffle togs.

At the lake

We slot two coins in the grey machine
whose ticket tongue lets us park here.

We break lettuce for green-headed drakes
to gag on; they do their waddle-rap for us.

Loose change drum-rolls on a formica top;
a hand emerges from the ice-cream van.

It passes me a Cornetto that I push
into my mouth to suck its white flesh.

I slip its cardboard top into the bin mouth,
the body of trees, the shape of money.

We sit on a bench and drop words,
which the other one picks up, returns.

Too much exchange. Only the silver
circle of lake declines to heed my gaze.

My Brother Rang Last Night to Say He Has Cancer

Today I rise and shine to a globe of bedside
lightbulb glowing through its metal web.

It strikes me the world is not round anymore.
I am rowing my dinghy to a mattress edge.

My brother has awakened me to the steep
drop. Once distant he seems so near now.

Too many lies. I stare at the netted bulb.
I trusted its daily power to revive this room,

but on the wall a polypous seesaw switch
could devolve me into this black-soup bed.

Helen Kay’s poems have been published in magazines including The Rialto and Butcher’s Dog. Her pamphlet This Lexia & Other Languages (V. Press) was born in 2020. She curates a project supporting dyslexic creatives. In 2021-22 she was highly commended by the Welsh Poetry Awards, shortlisted for the Live Canon collection and one of five poets featured in the Brotherton Poetry Prize Anthology. ‘Love Poem’ was published by Dreich Magazine, ‘L’Ivrogne’ was highly commended by the Festival of Firsts, and ‘Sligo Therapy’ was published by Troubadour of the Hills.