.png)
Helen Kay
back
next
the poet
Helen Kay has poems in The Rialto, Stand and Butcher’s Dog, as well as in her pamphlet, This Lexia & Other Languages. She curates Poetry Dyslexia and Imagination: a creative platform for people with dyslexia and other forms of neurodiversity. A finalist for the 2022 Brotherton Anthology, Helen won both the Repton and the Ironbridge poetry competitions in 2023. On social media, she's known for her hen puppet sidekick, Nigella.
the poems
Bitter
(from 𝑂𝐸 Biter)
The fox took away my old hens last night
to feed its starving cubs. Its vampire teeth
parted feathers, pierced the oesophagus
and windpipe below the sinewy neck
and severed the spinal cord, quick as birds
that snatch worms or pluck a butterfly
off a shelf of air. No waste; no signs, bar
sequins of spilt corn on moulted feathers.
Wearing his wife’s kimono, a QC beat
to death a fox caught in the wire fence
round his hen coop, blooded his baseball bat.
I am not bitter, Foxy. The cruellest bite
is the empty plate of death. I would bequeath
you my thighs, breast and legs to plump up
your bony kin. Worse things lurk darkly:
two million hens gassed and eaten daily.
We will chainsaw the coop, splintering tears
of plywood on the earth. We will plant
egg-smooth bean seeds in our hen manure
and watch the sparrows steal red cherries.
I will stir my tears in a glass of wine
or let them fall to dry on a page of words.
I will wear my fox socks, post #fox pics
cross my fingers, bolt my door at dusk.
Scrabble
Every night Dad and I clicked the tiles slick
as casino chips. A whiskey soda
lit his petrol-coupon glass to a sparkling
chandelier. An ashtray snake-charmed
a Silk Cut while he positioned the tiles,
turned misspellings into jokes. Winning
did not matter; it was our way of talking.
We were both dictionary-dependent, lifting
its cover like the lid of a Milk Tray box.
We fished letters from a yellow wash bag,
sliced them into so many meanings.
Slotted in our chairs, we made order:
ashtray, coaster, fag packet. My pen knitted
lines of scores, filled the evening’s blank page,
and always, upstairs, Mum, out cold, a burnt
stub, empty tumbler, blank tile, jumbled-up bag
of letters we could never put into words.
My Brother’s Widow
Not wanting to waste things, she sows your tomato seeds,
too late. The seedlings sprout in May, vulnerable and
hairy, moving forward imperceptibly, as she is.
Soon she has too many plants and gives me two.
Neither of us knows which bits to snip, what to feed them,
only that we are growing gently together, reaching out.
Green leaves unfurl their fingered symmetry towards me.
Constellations of yellow flowers hold tomorrows.
I can catch your flamboyance in the way they crowd my yard.
Sal has planted marigolds with hers, calls it companion planting.
In a way, I won’t mind a lack of tomatoes. The absence of them,
lurking round and red beneath the leaves, seems fitting.
Publishing credits
Bitter (from 𝑂𝐸 Biter): Live Canon Anthology 2022 (Live Canon)
Scrabble: won first prize at the Iron Bridge Poetry Festival 2023
My Brother's Widow: longlisted for the Cheltenham Poetry
Competition 2023
