Hear poet Elisabeth Kelly read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Elisabeth Kelly back next the poet Elisabeth Kelly lives on a hill farm with her family and too many animals. She's been published in numerous anthologies and journals both online and in print, and she's authored three poetry pamphlets: Carbon , Mind Mathematics and Wild Chamomile . Her first children's book is due out in 2022 from Stairwell Books. Among Elisabeth's favourite things are puddings, and the changing of the seasons. the poems Otzi and the Giant’s Eye 00:00 / 00:31 Sometimes, I feel I am curled up in the eye of a giant, light glints makes an iris out of sunbeams that wink from the depths of this ice sea. I forget for a moment, that suffocating pressure keeps me still as bonded molecules suspend me in a sphere of solid fluid. And I wonder, if I tap a finger against this lens would my world fracture into crystal tears and cry me out from the depths of this ice sea. Tiny Bird Heart 00:00 / 00:15 Light whispers at the window, blue burrows through nudges the dark away. Quietly I uncurl, the nest gives way, as your tiny bird heart beats through the sound of your feet dabbling across the floor. Wild Chamomile 00:00 / 00:40 It smells of pineapple when your crush it, I didn’t know that was the smell, until later. It is the smell of summer, concrete cracks where engine oil pooled, rainbows on slurry puddles, afternoon trips across fields to find an old milking carriage eroding in dens of nettles, the corrugated roof calling like Sleeping Beauty’s turrets full of promise, drizzling reality across the rotting wooden floors. It is scars created by rusted metal treasure, submerged in bogs, or broken bottles used on flat stones to cut berries, it is long days alone. Publishing credits Otzi and the Giant's Eye: Dodging The Rain (This Ice Sea) Tiny Bird Heart: Green Ink Poetry (Discovery Part 2) Wild Chamomile: Wild Chamomile (Selcouth Station)

Hear poet Rebecca Goss read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rebecca Goss © Natalie J Watts back next the poet A poet, tutor and mentor who lives in Suffolk, Rebecca Goss is the author of four full-length poetry collections and two pamphlets. Her second collection, Her Birth , was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2013 – while in 2015, she was shortlisted for both the Warwick Prize for Writing and the Portico Prize for Literature. Rebecca is the 2022 winner of the Sylvia Plath Prize, and her newest collection, Latch , was published by Carcanet in 2023. the poems The Hounds 00:00 / 00:48 It’s as if something calamitous is coming. Their lament rising across fields, its claim on the dawn keeping all the birds silent. I want to know what stirs them, the force of this pack. What causes them to stand, muscled frames trembling, throats full of baleful song. I am wakeful, rapt and disrupted, their bays sonorous against glass. Should I slide the thin pane, push my upper body into emerging light let them scent out my sex, and tell them we are all afraid. O this night, this bidding, claws at the latch, pure thunder of them running, my mouth opening to the cool and agitated air. At the Party I Shadowed Susie 00:00 / 01:02 who was happy to slip away walk with me into the back field where I drank her 17-year-old wisdom could look at her hair the opposite colour of mine her blue jeans convincing myself my twelve years were not an issue both of us plucking at grasses when we got almost to the oak we ventured back to the adults neither of us missed I lost Susie in the drunken stir of my parents’ garden until night got ready to flood the party I thought I might go in search of her or the cats so went to the furthest barn and in the black that had rolled inside I saw Susie being held by Richard the boy I’d ignored because his punky clothes confused me now his left hand inside Susie’s back pocket as they sought each other’s mouths air urgent unfamiliar standing there considering myself betrayed waiting until breakfast to utter it the sudden turn of my parents’ heads curious to know what I saw my mother sensing something flicker staring at her daughter so full of heat and blood and questions Gate 00:00 / 00:27 Here she comes, hair a stream, path home, dog’s ears pricked to the latch, and I’m in the garden, pear tree spilling, day of poems behind me, hiding my stored dark, thinking I must look old and not extraordinary, her skin the truest surface wanting to kiss her as she drops her bag, turns, every atom of her near me, and I make my slight gesture, feel the quickening. Publishing credits All poems: Latch (reproduced with gratitude to Carcanet Press for its kind permission)

Hear poet Ed Garvey Long read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Ed Garvey Long back next the poet Life coach Ed Garvey-Long is a queer poet from North London. He has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, and published his first pamphlet, The Living Museum , in 2019. Ed's poems have featured in Under the Radar , Perverse , c lavmag and harana poetry . His hobbies include hand-sewing quilts, and long walks with his husband. the poems Visitor 00:00 / 01:06 I look up from my muesli and Jane Austen’s in my kitchen, red-cheeked from dancing and tiny like a museum mannequin. She comes to join me at the table, doesn’t say a word, smiling warmly like we share a funny truth. I don’t say a word either – what would she make of my accent? She looks around bewildered but taking it all in her stride. Maybe she often falls out of time to join gay men eating their muesli? We look at each other awkwardly again with beaming smiles and a sense of when is this going to end? She goes to speak, looking at me directly, but she fades out, and then she's gone. Sunday in the Woods 00:00 / 01:10 All the dogs follow us home. At first we pretend it’s an inconvenience, but then we start dancing and skipping with a conga line of cavapoos and dachshunds, labradors and cockers, huskies, newfoundlanders and chihuahuas gambolling and prancing behind us. Once home, we thrive drenched in dog slobber, swimming in kibble and poo bags – our flat’s a Pets At Home warehouse. But we love them all endlessly, yes. We love them all more than the bored middle-class families did. We love the chaos of it, we love the glory and the noise. And the love: we love the love of having them with us, falling over each other in an abundant pile, a glorious fur phantasmagoria. Borrowed Light 00:00 / 00:43 Friday and I pick off the moss of this week and let myself stand in brightness streaming through our modest windows yellowing my books the snake plant likes to be crowded and the song thrush is back to nest if we have anything it is borrowed light warm on our faces large and powerful and second-hand Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Suchi Govindarajan read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Suchi Govindarajan back next the poet Writer, poet and photographer Suchi Govindarajan lives in Bengaluru, India. Her poetry has appeared in publications ranging from IceFloe Press and Cordite Poetry Review to perhappened magazine and Usawa Literary Review . Her poems have also been included in two anthologies. Poetry is Suchi's first love – fiction is her newest. the poems Of blood and war 00:00 / 02:10 The first time it happens, you are barely twelve. So much blood must mean either wound or war, s o you run to your mother and ask if you are dying. This is not death, she says, this is existence — just the basic bloodshed of being woman. There will be a celebration next week, she says with silks and jaggery, turmeric and gold. But don't be swayed by such fleeting love; the real gift is an unwritten book, stitched with rope, bound with tradition, its pages ornate and yet so sharp with rules, they only slice the fingers of women. Because you are a child, you take this gift, and you come to believe in this unquestioning dark, the flowers that will wilt, the milk that will spoil, the men and other fragile beings that will take ill. Everything, she says, that can be defiled by you. Last April you helped your aunt make mango pickles. This month, even your touch will spoil them — all that careful soaking in brine and spice — all that ageing in the home's coldest corners where you will now sit for days every month, muffling the many mouths of your pain. You cannot go to temples now, says your mother. You cannot worship the goddess I named you after. You are still a child, she says, but you are enough woman You are still a child, but you are already too much woman for anyone to bear, not the men, not the priests. They must pray to save all their gods from you. You told me once that he loved you 00:00 / 01:29 You told me once that he loved you because you were simple. I wondered then if he had seen your bookshelf or your bathroom. Did he see that small callus at the base of your palm? Does he know the weight of your gaze as you look out the window? Even on cold nights, you never cover your feet with a blanket, yet you show me these socks he bought for you to wear. They are the exact shade of purple that you hate and call violet. You told me once that he loved you even if you weren't beautiful. I wondered then if he had seen you speak about justice or poetry. Has he seen how you hesitate before you burst into laughter? Does he know you have your grandfather's hooded eyes? You told me once, under the yellow light of a station, of your surprise at his love and his existence. It was a windy night, your wild hair was held in a bun. You were wearing a sweater that billowed like a storm. You told me then you would try and love him back. I smiled, and felt a new grief in my limbs. Current affairs 00:00 / 02:05 My teacher told me my poems should be more current, should celebrate things in the news like the breaking of sports records, like the eradication of diseases, new machines in our libraries, or how a child, just six years old, sang like he was born of birds. Don't just write about flowers he said, or philosophy or these clouds of unrequited love that billow about your youth. Until we broke the mosque, I did not follow his advice. Until then, nothing in the world had touched my cocooned life: I had touched nothing in the world. But now I felt like it was my chariot wheels that crayoned dried blood into the tar. I watched my parents turn to wolves at orange moons, cheering for men with pickaxes, waving their fists at a box they could not turn off. But when I went to my teacher my words now a raw torment my pen now moving hard enough to leave round bruises on the page behind (at last, I thought, a poem he would praise) he grew narrow and cold. In a play last year, he had painted my face blue, draped me in shawls of gold and Raamar green. I had broken a bow for him. Now he whispered mantrams to protect his gods, and flung my poem back and told me to stick to love and clouds and flowers. Something that would dissolve and disperse easily. Something that would not leave marks even on the back of a page. Publishing credits Of blood and war: Usawa Literary Review (Issue 2) You told me once that he loved you / Current affairs: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Charlotte Ansell read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Charlotte Ansell back next the poet Charlotte Ansell left Yorkshire via the North Sea to moor up on the Medway. Her third collection Deluge was a 2019 Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation, and she’s had poetry in Poetry Review, Mslexia, Now Then, Butcher’s Dog, Prole, Algebra of Owls and various anthologies – most recently These Are The Hands: Poems from the Heart of the NHS . Charlotte received a Royal Society of Literature Literature Matters Award in 2020, and is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen . the poems My child buys a They/Them badge After Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 00:00 / 01:52 Because you made an announcement, does it make it so? Forgive me, I don’t see boy not yet, just the you you’ve always been, somewhere in between, yes, halfway through a door I have no key to, a warren I cannot tumble down. I am far too old to shape-shift now, despite your insistence it can be done. Please allow me time to grieve, the you that shrunk and slipped away. The only place your given name exists is in passwords on my phone, all other traces scrunched up, crossed out, erased, sunk or burnt. Your new pronouns cram my mouth, get lodged behind my tongue. I don’t expect the binders to always hold off the surgeon’s knife but forever is a long stretch when you’re fifteen; this is not like a decision to tattoo the word regret on your arm. I watch your carpet get worn with your white rabbit circles, it feels like your absolute conviction is the hook you needed to hang your pain on, with only me wondering why this one. They are already painting the roses, a whole court clamouring for my head but they don’t know you, my love, you can be anything you want and I will always be your mum. I want you to keep one more Drink me just in case, I want you to leave yourself an if . Published with the consent and blessing of my child Mockingbird Based on the traditional song, and after Terence Hayes’ A Golden Shovel 00:00 / 01:08 Your gasp prompts a finger to her lips – Hush. Ever the mimic, kingfisher shade this time, no longer little all grown as blue dye blush seeps her shoulders, your baby gone. Hugs are tolerated but far more nopes and don’t Mum , with rolled eyes, more words less say in her life; no beak grasping yet still a claw outstretched, please a familiar word, she only says Mama’ s - oftly when she wants something, all you cradled gonna fly, no more fluffed wings piled in your lap, you can’t buy back those years, mouth tight to a thumb. You love her still as fierce as a swan but she is restless, gobby, mockingbird. Credo for the clinic at the girls’ school 00:00 / 02:16 Don’t take this home even if this heaviness is not a shoulder bag of textbooks you can shrug off, it will settle in your bones, behind your eyes when your 9am cries for the mum who was either drunk or not there, says she isn’t bothered that she has a room now with an actual bed, where no one shouts she misses hugs, the unpredictability. Keep your tone neutral, if tears threaten, hold them back your empathy must be muted. Don’t bring home here, In these corridors, this tiny room you cannot be mum. When your 10am says she doesn’t know Why she feels so sad, after a year in which her half-brother saw his dad murdered, a stubbed cigarette life caring for her disabled mum before she reached fifteen do not say you understand. Do not make suggestions that are plainly stupid, there are those who recommend pinging a rubber band instead of taking a razor to a wrist but this is akin to gritted teeth in an avalanche. Resist. Never say it will be OK, you are here to sit with them in the tremors and not flinch. Hold still, no one feels listened to by a fidget. Never check your watch. Try to focus through your 10.55’s elaborate lies It’s not your job to believe her, nor judge or call her out. Your 12.15 doesn’t come, which considering, is no surprise. Don’t for one minute think you can rescue any of them – you are not God. At lunch, escape to the park for a proper latte from the mobile van. Head back. When your 2pm says she doesn’t feel seen, one of ten kids, beneath the hijab she has no faith in and tells you life is pointless, do not contradict. When the bell goes, do not take this home. Do not try this at home. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet S Reeson read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. S Reeson back next the poet S Reeson (she/they) is 58 and bisexual. They have been published by The Poetry Society and Bloomsbury/OneWorld, and had work in more than 20 publications and anthologies – most recently, Ink, Sweat & Tears . When not creating, they are very close to being able to deadlift their body weight. the poems Blame 00:00 / 00:52 I will not let this voice be silenced this has become a moment definition carving ideals going forward that in a space for giving the right things aren’t received people have stopped listening everyone who plays this game do you see that rules have changed questions transform weapons a proper form to lessons learnt at distance and in time I will ask this voice will define Cascade 00:00 / 01:27 the day she opened up my brain put her hand inside plucked out a poisoned shard I may not have been listening instead I may have been falling the day I learnt fairy stories aren't for happy endings they're for lessons earnt I heard inertia's static undermining that may soon destroy us all I renounced its terrorism ~ another day begins within a schism inside this safest space indicates an altering position I do not see enough inclusivity instead I only taste their lack of comprehension the day that other people accept they're born as levers the world might then begin to change I will not repeat a previous senseless history inbred I will become a helper kinder force idealism ~ the day I finally embrace a subtle shift relaxing this constant fist constant poisoned shards cascade away Give 00:00 / 00:51 sometimes it is about you and the comprehension given to what it is that isn’t good an acceptance of a need to change looking at what’s fundamentally wrong piling up as rubbish round our feet nobody anywhere is perfect ask when was the last time objectivity came off the shelf in the spaces between living take a long hard look at yourself there is always space to give Publishing credits All poems: previously published in the author's Substack

Hear poet Kate Jenkinson read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Kate Jenkinson back next the poet Dr Kate Jenkinson is scientist and poet reconciled – and one of a handful of LinkedIn Business Poets . Her work has appeared in publications such as Flights , Feral and Steel Jackdaw . In 2022, she performed her TEDx talk Poetry Never Abandons Us . Two years later, her debut collection Un/Broken was born. Kate is the founder of the groundbreaking Poetry in Business Conference, launched in 2024, with its mission of creating more paid jobs for poets. Her neurodivergence and aphantasia are both features of her recent work. She also likes hats, writing about the many she wears. the poems Curated Chaos 00:00 / 02:11 INCOMING TEXT: ‘It’s been a right faff. But I’ve got it sorted.’ Love is: changing a tyre at 10.30pm so I can go to my poetry workshop, and he can play golf Love is: asking if you want to eat tea together Love is: eating tea together ADHD is: forgetting you said you would eat tea together, getting distracted and forgiveness. Zuihitsu legitimises distraction allowing me to follow the flow of a busy brain. Lyrics that are my life’s soundtrack I’ll tell you what What I have found That I’m no fool I’m just upside down. Kairos time is my favourite. It’s not chronology. It’s being ready to seize the moment! Is a neurodivergent brain synonymous with creativity? I think it could be. Would you be interested in attending more live events in Hebden Bridge or the local area? I don’t know what the local area means, so how do I answer that question? I definitely want to attend more live events in the North as opposed to virtual, but I really miss the chat function – which is ironic (it should be called the random thoughts function). Random thoughts I have often that infiltrate and illuminate my dreams: • losing my teeth • resitting my ‘A’ Levels • getting to school late and then waking to remember I’m 55 and I can never be late for school again. Ducks sound like they are laughing – well they would – they outlasted the dinosaurs. Corporal Punishment 00:00 / 01:42 I pushed you hard: in sport, in study, in life, at work. I burnt you out three times at least. I neglected, ignored, dehydrated and undernourished you. Dear Body , I am sorry I didn’t learn to love you more when we were young. I only noticed you in pain or pleasure, never in-between. I rebelliously loved the features others called out in playground names: rubber lips, hairy legs, melancholy eyes. I had to cover up for shame of exposing thighs, ‘above the knee’, that others should not see. Now I wish I had been there for you, as you have always been there for me. Had I understood your needs I may not have fallen so low. Menopause feels like your revenge as you demand attention through every wayward regulation. P.S. I will do my best to listen, to understand the transformation we are going through. I must accept this for what it is: a time to be wise, womanly, mature. Where sleep, thoughts, thermoregulation, nutrition, heart beats, beauty are in transition. Body , I will learn to love you more. Forgotten 00:00 / 01:11 I forget. Then remember I’ve forgotten to forget, again. A repeating pattern. Every time the shame, the stinking shame of it screws my face, makes me gag. Those reeking memories plague me. Remind me of all I wish I’d done for me, instead of giving that promise of a better life to someone else. I could have asked for help. But a strong woman has no voice. She shoulders the burden mute; stubborn as a beaten mule. She digs in deeper. Calloused hands dig so deep, she is buried in remembering. And only when she’s six foot under, coffin-deep, bone-cold, where no-one can hear her, forgotten: she screams. Publishing credits Curated Chaos / Forgotten: exclusive first publication by iamb Corporal Punishment: Un/Broken (Poetic Edge Publishers)

Hear poet Rachel Carney read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Rachel Carney back next the poet Writer, creative writing tutor and academic Rachel Carney is based in Cardiff. She won the 2021 Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Competition, and has had work place highly in several other competitions. Her poetry has appeared in One Hand Clapping , The Interpreter's House , Ink, Sweat & Tears and elsewhere. Rachel's debut collection, Octopus Mind , with its themes of perception, creativity and neurodiversity, was one of The Guardian’s Best Poetry Books of 2023 . the poems Self-Portrait as Pieces of a Saint After Saint Teresa of Avila 00:00 / 01:01 you may kiss my jaw in Rome or grip my finger bones in Avila peer through thick museum glass at my shrivelled drooping heart and see how they transfigured me at death into a slice of pious art my humble flesh spooned out in prayer my left arm pinned for you in crystal decomposing slowly in its own realm I am exhumed again my skin ripped from its frame plundered for your touch your taste devoured by your curiosity your faith in me and though you hold the pieces of me in your hands I am not here I never was Dys 00:00 / 00:56 I want to dis/ entangle the sly hiss of dys, to dis/embowel the fraught dis/ease of it, as it slips in front, so sure, so certain. I want to dis/turb its dis/avowal, crumple it, curtail its sudden fist, flung like an abuser’s kiss. I want to dis/arm the beast of it, dis/dain its dis/approval, dis/pel its dis/paraging taste, its dull dis/gust, how it dis/ figures our praxis, dis/misses us. I dis/inter dys – its cold corpse dis/carded on the kitchen floor, like an old god. Mine 00:00 / 01:18 I’ve known you, always, in the small pearl of your absence, drifting slowly away from me across the years. I’ve felt your restless waters, your crumbling edifice, your waves. I’ve seen how dark this cave is, full of dancing shadows, echoes of echoes. There is no avoiding the possibility of you in the ebb and flow of ongoing tides. I’ve seen you in the flash of the sun on the water. I blink, and then you’re out of sight. I’ve heard your quiet breath, as you lap against my surface. Your shore is wide and open, your song a song of life, your ripples hardly there. I’ve always known how impossible you are. A bubble, faint with light. The skin of you so thin. What would it take to turn you into flesh? How can we know what could have been? Publishing credits All poems: Octopus Mind (Seren Books)

Hear poet May Chong read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. May Chong back next the poet May Chong, a Chinese/Malaysian poet and speculative writer, has had her work featured in Strange Horizons , Uncanny Magazine , adda , Parentheses Journal and elsewhere. She enjoys spoken word (watching and performing), birdwatching and terrible puns. May's nature-themed micro-chapbook, Seed, Star, Song , is available as part of Ghost City Press' Summer 2020 series. the poems You ask the soil if you belong 00:00 / 02:10 What has always been whispered through other leaves grows bold, thunderclaps laterite-red: never. Transplant, hue and clay, your roots never the right length. Untrue/half-bred not hybrid, weed not plant. Be silent and show some gratitude for this flowerbed, for being at all allowed. If you protest, tear up taproots and leave, raw mandrake words and all. Never mind how we were all planted once upon a time. One more time. The loess left behind answers come home . You will be welcome and warm, one with brethren abandoned before seedcoat thoughts. Come home , you must return to ancestral yellow, mellow alluvium where no others are allowed. (But you have already torn/ been torn tongue from stem to survive. You feel the way you will wither, alone in a field of pinched heads.) Rocks whisper from where black dragons tumbled them riverwise. In your sap runs neverbelonging, mountain thrust into monsoon. We are all of us guests from nowhere. The knowing makes it easier to bear the stones. And still you want. You awaken. Again you ask the soil if you belong, and you should not be grateful for silence. Yet you are. Lockdown 00:00 / 01:11 Grant me space secured with key, myself and I. Walls of my own creation, closest to a one-man hug. A floor to take a stand on, because the letting in has meaning. Give me granite and blood concrete before those who have ripped 'moment' and 'wait' and 'just' from their dictionary. Swallow the deep diggers who think keys are only for those in hiding. My time has its meaning, its rhythm and combinations because bolts in the head are trouble and padlocks through the heart are worse. Ask the selves I debrided, husbanded, ribs toothed like tiger traps. Vulnerability has meaning, meaning let me slam the door closed and fling it wide to let you in, you who means something. And even now 00:00 / 01:19 A radish waxes defiant in the asphalt below JR Osaka station’s pedestrian bridge. A man thinks of its rich tresses, his granddaughter, the last time he felt like smiling. Near Wangsa Maju, a moth flies into a packed LRT. Small as hope, alive. A whole carriage holds its breath until it lands on a Bangladeshi worker's chapalled toe. Some nameless brown bird gurgles into the rain-soaked morning. Soon there will be sun and wind enough for everything to dry gorgeous. Silence is learning how to unlock love, unlock tears from behind teeth, loose them with the gasp of something born anew. You learn from your elders how to make broth from the good bones of a world and still, and still, and still— Publishing credits You ask the soil if you belong: Bending Genres (Issue 19) Lockdown: exclusive first publication by iamb And even now: Banshee (Issue 12)

Hear poet Hannah Linden read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Hannah Linden © Jeanette Mullins back next the poet Hailing from a northern working-class background but living now in ramshackle social housing in Devon, Hannah Linden has had her poetry published in Acumen , Lighthouse , Magma , New Welsh Review , Tears in the Fence , Under the Radar and elsewhere. She won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition in 2021, and was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award 2021. Hannah's debut pamphlet is The Beautiful Open Sky , and she's currently working towards her first full poetry collection. the poems What the Wind Said 00:00 / 01:48 There’s no doubt I was already buried. I was prone and silent so it’s no surprise people talked about me in the third person. I was the family problem—the musty smell from a corner, the already gone but lingering. I did everything underground. Even my thinking was hidden from me. Up would come an idea— a fruit that was perhaps poisonous. I didn’t know how to trust anything. I felt the rooms of me become caves half full of water, somewhere, somewhere. My body was a disconnect. I was blind and deaf. Threads of me stretched thin, deep below the family carpet. I wanted to be gone, threw spores to the wind— tiny pieces of conversation seeking release, some lichen-yearn escape from a spent flower burst. There was no romance in it, no fairytale quest. I was turning myself into nothing, drifting on thin air. I don’t know who whispered onto a breeze the direction to a crack in the pavement. It was a small thing, small kindness, like I was alive—like I should be alive. The Fight 00:00 / 01:33 She said HE had packed my things, boxes stacked under the stairs, ready for the off. I tasted nothing of the reconciliation supper, the too- light chatter of my brothers, my sister's over-long hug as we whispered goodbye. But I felt Mum's silence in the car, the negative pull until I was a black hole sucking everything into my void, except her. She sat on the edge of Nan's spare bed. You will never come home again. I am a half-circle. I am an apple falling from the tree. When she left, I slit open the boxes to search for my overall: my dead dad's shirt, the hold of his undying smell. My step-father had thrown away this rag of him—the remnant Dad gave me for when there’s dirty work to do. How he'd kept me clean. I roll up my sleeves, remember bare arms, tattoos he'd regretted— it's my skin being bloodied now. Light 00:00 / 01:35 When I first climbed out it was simply the absence of him. Then the absence of pain in the shoulders that I hadn’t known was connected to him, like shadows are. Then a ladder started to form, simple steps like noticing I enjoyed the sound of a ticking clock. Or being able to turn over in bed, turn on a lamp to read, or open the curtains to the moon. Ladders of light are not a form of magic. Sometimes they are silence in a room that is not always aware of the sounds in another. I wasn’t used to climbing, the muscles in my legs weary from lack of use. Resting on a ladder of light takes practice. I made some of the rungs into ledges. Rested with my children. Sometimes it’s best not to look back or try to calculate how far there is left to climb. In the hollows at the back of the rock face, pressed hard into the surface, the imprint of women’s fingers, more felt than visible, waiting to be found. Publishing credits What the Wind Said / Light: exclusive first publication by iamb The Fight: The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press)

Hear poet Lesley James read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Lesley James back next the poet Lesley James is a writer from Wales whose debut poetry chapbook is A Walk With Scissors . She's been published in a range of literary magazines and anthologies, including BOLD , The Broken Spine , Full House Literary Mag and Spelt Magazine . She was shortlisted for a UK Very Short Story award by LoveReadingUK, and won Cardiff Writers’ Poetry, Flash and Article prizes in 2022-23. Lesley's words have also earned her two 2023 Best of the Net nominations. the poems Ways in which a cortado can prompt existentialism (No. 3) 00:00 / 01:09 In the pastel Caffè Nero that used to be my bank, a man nudges a scuffed skirting board with his toe as he moves a chair. It falls off. I realise they’re all fake. Held on by silicone or No More Nails. What’s important is the impression. Never mind the feeling of concealment and being duped. The Doric pillars rise. But not very far. What sits above the lowered ceiling, I ask a barista? Beyond the replicated coving? He shrugs and shakes his head behind the Perspex screen. Bank clerks, no doubt. In a stately two-tone world. Greying and cobwebby. You Don’t Know What I’ve Done With thanks to Rachel Long, Caroline Bird and Arda Collins 00:00 / 01:02 And they say that Polar bears are under threat, but I saw them – one grey one beige – shopping in Cardiff City Centre yesterday. I did one of Harry Styles’ tattoos – and they threw me out of art class aged thirteen. Lizzo chose me to be one of her Big Gurrl Dancers, and I said ‘No, bitch.’ You don’t know what I’ve done. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'VE DONE. I invented squissors, scissory tongs to squeeze the slop from cat food pouches so you don’t get gunk all on your hands. And you know that gunk, the cat food stuff that drips all on your hands … I’ve licked that. I chose an elderly guy – seventy-five – to fuck to end my marriage – Yeah! I stole the cat – that cat, the one who lives with me – from his perfectly good home and made friends with his real mother. And I write it. I write it all. Like I’m writing us. Now. In The Drag Queen Vegan Café Ways in which a cortado can prompt existentialism (No. 5) 00:00 / 02:05 To unsheathe September’s lunaria seed from their waxy shields, you should first lick your fingertips. Take a single flat seed head between two fingers and a thumb, and make to snap your fingers. It falls apart. The crispy ovals flutter down. Catch the falling seeds. Some will jump away, and found the Honesty of two years’ time. Pearl lantern moons remain. On vanilla feet with toffee apple fur, the cat forgets we do this every year. He chases the papery housings like they are secrets I’ve been keeping from him, or his own free will. In darkness he practises sleeping round corners for when winter comes. But for now, everything is drag-queen vegan café, Banksy in Port Talbot, Frida Kahlo on blue brick. The buddleia points tourmaline fingers at pigeon-blood cosmos wearing bee earrings (clip-ons). The wingbeats of overhead sparrows purr like flicked open fans. Last night’s massive bedroom moth (critch-critch) has laid eggs from her orange furry bum, and left the building. Everything is voluminous, daubed-on, lipstick smeared, waiting to die. An apple drops. The astilbe is still. Publishing credits Ways in Which a Cortado Can Prompt Existentialism (No. 3): A Walk With Scissors (Infinity Books UK) You Don’t Know What I’ve Done: exclusive first publication by iamb In The Drag Queen Vegan Café: Full House Literary Magazine (Issue 2)

Hear poet Anila Arshad-Mehmood read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Anila Arshad-Mehmood Johanna Elizabeth Photography back next the poet Anila Arshad-Mehmood (she/her) volunteers as a governor at a school and a trustee at a mental health charity. She has a professional background in mental health and wellbeing working with young people, and currently delivers safeguarding and mental health training to colleagues. Her writing focuses on her experiences of immigrant family life in an anti-cohesive lifestyle. Anila's interests range from reading, drinking coffee and petting cats to travelling as widely as possible to learn about other cultures and cuisines. An enthusiastic member of several book clubs, Anila considers poetry an abiding personal passion. the poems The World is Made This Way 00:00 / 01:09 When I scrunch my nose up Tight into my brain I feel something It's like a bad smell crawled into my mind to hold on to Why do we do the things we do To make others feel bad for their good You can be good Own your best Your strength is power And if you are better than the rest why is it Bad to feel good to feel bad to feel Something about me is triggered by you Not something is bad about you I'm letting you know I'm feeling something because of how you Present to me but it's me who feels the feeling Not you who is bad to be good in me forcing feelings on Owning my feeling My strength My best Better, smart, assured Because not everything is me and the world is different and we all have our Better and best self and skill and behaviour And this one can be mine It isn't yours But it's not bad to say Because the world is made this way Labyrinth 00:00 / 02:31 There's a ball of twine glowing at my feet I could pick it up, See if it leads me to the centre of the labyrinth. Or I could stay here, Try my way back to the door which I closed behind me. I didn't lock it but I didn't leave breadcrumbs, I was certain the way back wasn't needed, interesting or useful anymore. Going back or forwards, Forward or backwards. When you communicate differently what do you see A different reaction or an explanation that emotions exist Hide Exist inside your mind, nose, mind. I'm a woman with emotions, More than hate, rage, fear, rage, anger, rage, sadness, rage Curious, open, sadness, happiness, excitement, engaged, hopeful Open the door and check with the key Which key opens the door This behaviour means Empath: noun noun: empath; plural noun: empaths 1. (chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual. Emotional perception, try on the jacket of his dear friend and coat yourself in their sadness, happiness, sadness, step away so it leaves you behind. Emotional perception so your eyes glaze with the tinted glasses on his dear friend see sadness, happiness, sadness. Emotional perception, try on a medicated maze of bars blocking the feelings of every dear friend so only you can feel numb and nothing – not their dear saddappiness. Empathic Guide. Twine in a maze of bloody chains and no need for breadcrumbs, step into the light and wander around without the twine. No map, no guide, no rooms, doors, windows, what comes next, explore, who says twine is the way to explore anymore? Still 00:00 / 00:49 the women who came before me Rose but how can I wonder how can I access my sass draw on words and steal back breath to rise above this smog engulfing me I am drowning in black squares zoom sequences and distant W A L K S dreaming of the time when I step back from the bitter twisted lies written in hashtags I’ll remember I didn’t run from discomfort even when it ran from me like women who came before me I want to fill with air and rise Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb