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Isabelle Kenyon
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the poet
Manchester poet and novelist Isabelle Kenyon is managing director of Fly on the Wall Press. She's had four poetry chapbooks published – most recently, Growing Pains and Potential. Isabelle has also published debut thriller, The Dark Within Them. Her poetry appears in IceFloe Press, Ink, Sweat & Tears and elsewhere.
the poems
Afternoon Tea with Self
We are in Ali’s café at the end of the world –
it must be
for I am sharing scones with myself at sixteen
our legs gangly under table
and much the same,
though one pair is wrapped in electric blue,
and I find there is always an Ali’s café to be found
somewhere.
She says she is ready to understand,
dabbing lip-gloss curves with napkin.
I say she never will, sorry,
some things, people, you just pass on from, like wraiths,
better to shrug the last five years off
like glitter.
She says I am lying, of course, and I smile
for I knew she would say it
and we finish our tea like a stubborn, married couple.
Gestures which are really
about inadequacy and
absent fathers
I like you experimental
hair strands traversing the colour spectrum,
sheep-shorn at the base, wild
deep, like your laugh.
Lately, you've tamed nature to Mouse
for a man who requires bread pre-chewed
into starch.
You mother-bird hop;
I text silent space bars of an argument
which is really about growing up and out
as two separate shoots of grass
one nestled in the same compost,
one fidgeting for further fields.
Wonder
She gives him hair on his chest
downy like the otter, playful and familiar.
He gives her her lips
from the pit of a plum, all spring
and juice
she finds herself delicious.
She has found answers:
why his spine is sculpted just so
why his hands are warm bowls of milk.
Publishing credits
Afternoon Tea with Self / Gestures which are really
about inadequacy and absent fathers: exclusive first
publication by iamb
Wonder: Sarasvati Magazine (Indigo Dreams Publishing)