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J A Lenton
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the poet
J A Lenton lives in Dorset, writes for a scientific publisher, and is the author of poetry pamphlet Kingdom of Mud. After studying English and Philosophy in Nottingham he received an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. Jack's poetry has appeared in Vice, The Cardiff Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, and on The Poetry Society's website. He was commended in the Bridport Prize for Poetry in 2023 and Magma Poetry Prize in 2024, numbered among the winners of The Poetry Society's Members' Poems competition in 2024, and shortlisted for the Society's Free Verse Prize in 2025.
the poems
Reproductions
‘When the caterpillar is fully grown, it makes a button of silk
which it uses to fasten its body to a leaf or a twig.
Then the caterpillar’s skin comes off for the final time.
Under this old skin is a hard skin called a chrysalis.’
Gene Darby, What is a Butterfly? (1958)
We were pupaed in our parkas
chilling outside the red factory
where your da once hefted
whole chunks of cow and pig,
where the dead certainty of animal
emerged in complex blends – soups,
sausages and ready meals – the sort
an eight-year-old could make. Did.
A man isn’t his work you said,
stink-eyeing me like a deserter.
In that waist-deep grass,
the perfect height for hiding in,
fat-necked dandelions
scaled the chain fences.
We kicked off their heads, waiting
around for nothing. I had a job offer,
you had a hangover. You were all nerves,
I was a ball of them – was this how escape felt?
All my insides minced through
this rusting fence’s mesh?
I said, But they’ll crush me like a bug.
We looked at the nursery of clouds,
the two unthreading contrails.
We looked at our feet,
nettle, cleavers, bindweed.
We looked at the peeling factory walls.
They’ll crush you anyway, you shrugged.
It’s how things get made.
Family Value
Each time she came home, there was less of her.
The doctor warned our family, Slow down.
You’re taking too much. Watching the way
he fingered her weakening pulse,
you could tell he had eyes on her heart.
It started simple. An ear went missing here
(mounted on my uncle’s living room wall),
A pinkie vanished there
(joint-locked and tensed, a perfect coat-hook)
What began at extremities broke into extremes:
At Christmas dinner, she sat bewildered;
she was just a torso propped up with pillows.
I had to wine and dine her, holding her knife
saying, It’s quite all right, do you remember
the relic of this jaw, how it moves and bites?
Others got the best of her. The neighbours
rolled up her tongue like a Turkish rug.
Her arse appeared at my mother's door
gift-wrapped so lovingly with an unsigned note
stating, You should keep this in the family.
Truth be told, I snuck out an eye. She was past
noticing. In my workshop, I cleared the cloud
and realigned the sights. I still look through it,
reviewing that world just beyond my grasp.
The trail on my cheek, her garden’s path.
Belongings
On my tenth trip around the sun,
I was gifted a broken copper watch,
given by Grandpa, a man I hardly knew,
would never know – we were beyond repair.
Fixing the workings was a waste of time,
the battery was ancient, three vital cogs
had fused into a knuckle. I hear his son,
tongue clicking, What’s even a watch
if it no longer works around the clock?
Still, it’s on my wrist. I love its silence.
The way the lean, long hand reaches out
for the green-furred six. In a hundred years,
it will still be arriving. I catch myself staring,
willing it on, caught between the minutes.
That this worn-out thing, so far beyond fixing,
can still fix me, hold me still for a moment
as the world spins indefinitely on, displays
an older face still ticking inside this one.
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb