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the poet
Jane Ayres re-discovered poetry while studying part-time for a Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent. Soon after, she was longlisted for the 2020 Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. The following year, Jane was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and became a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize (she also picked up an Honourable Mention in the 2022 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest). Twice nominated for Best of the Net, once for The Pushcart Prize, Jane has had her poetry published in more than 100 publications. She's also read her work for Eat the Storms, Upload, The Blue Door, Ó Bhéal, Medway River Lit and iamb. Her first collection, edible, appeared in 2022. Her most recent work is micro-chap, my lost womb still sings to me.
the poems
Giving my ex-boss
a hand job for £20
(mates rates)
His request took me by surprise
since I’d only invited him round for coffee
making it clear there was to be no more sex.
But at the time I was working four part-time jobs
to pay my rent and cover the bills.
It really would be easy money
(I told myself) and I was right
because it took my gloved hand
just two minutes
to achieve the desired outcome
– less time than it took to write this poem.
Not a bad rate of pay
and to be honest, I wondered if
he might want to make it a regular
thing, although he said afterwards
he usually had it done professionally.
final witness
this thing you did
this thing
this thing you did
that splinters
needles
gnaws
claws
caws
calls you out
calls you in
burrows deep
deeper
seeps
leaks
loops
leaches
feeds
this thing that
taunts
haunts
hunts
preys
takes fright
invites
the want
to do a good thing
the right thing
because the time you had
the times we had
the time you have
dissolving
wilting
tilting
twisting
this thing
this thing we did
requiem for an
age-inappropriate lover
i see you
my body becomes cotton
& the trickling wound will not heal or shut
the knot in my back is spreading
loaded with sticky expectation
wearing my coming & going dress / firefly-bright
a handful of knitted moments / charred seeds
just a little crush
in the bluebelled forest
hollow promises made easily
the curve of your cheek / a buried moon / bone-white
this hand / nettle-woven / pinking the sinuous hive
blurring the tongue-choked lines
scraping the chalky narrative
i’ll walk for miles to keep our secret
Publishing credits
Giving my ex-boss a hand job for £20 (mates rates):
The Friday Poem (May 19th 2023)
final witness/requiem for an age-inappropriate lover:
Cōnfingō Publishing (Spring 2021)