Baba Yaga No Longer Reads the News

Since decommissioned
she’s a dug-out in the woods.
Word is, she’s quit electrolysis
so her stubbled legs resemble chicken flesh
and likewise her eyebrows
foster a dire and savage air.
 
She creeps through the spinney
zealous as ground frost
scouring for morsels to tender her pot.
She is a fallow vessel
who deigned to grey,
a babble word.
 
Now a rumour of an intern eaten whole;
young reporters always hustling for a story:
the talking dolls; the lantern skulls;
an oven chocked with teeth;
and how she is protected
by the devil’s spitting geese.
 

Helen Ivory

published in collection, The Anatomical Venus, 2019, Bloodaxe Books,
ISBN 978-1-7803746-9-7

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The Hanged Woman Addresses The Reverend Heinrich Kramer

      To conclude. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.
                                Malleus Maleficarum 1486, Revs Kramer and Sprenger
 
Do you cower in your crib at night
against encroaching evil tongues?
I picture you skittish inside your nightgown
as swollen tempests swoop upon your roof
and rattle the door you bolted thrice
against the dark invisible.
 
You said my womb knew such hunger
that I might devour a man entire.
Pray tell me in your clearest chapel voice
what tales they told you at the breast?
A pretty Devil’s pact that would render
your creeping flesh delicious!
 
A sough of wind stirs papers on your desk.
You say women have weak memories,
then you shall be perplexed
that, despite my ruined body in the noose,
I recall each gnawing passage of your book.
When the sun awakens, they will cut me down.
 

Helen Ivory

published in collection, The Anatomical Venus, 2019, Bloodaxe Books,
ISBN 978-1-7803746-9-7

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The Hungry Mirrors

The mirrors of the abandoned city
are hungry as hungry can be.
At least the lakes have a bellyful of sky.
At least the ponds are heavy with livestock.
 
These days, it’s drawn blinds,
empty changing rooms
and the chirruping crickets
they have no ears for.
 
Once, a spider hauled itself
down by a thread
and they gorged on it frantically,
like a someone lost in the desert.
 
Ah, those starveling servants of vanity,
we must pity them in their lean days –
when all eternity is an empty great coat
in the maw of an unlit corridor.
 

Helen Ivory

published in chapbook, Maps of the Abandoned City, 2019, SurVision,
ISBN 1-912963-04-3

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Zoo of the Abandoned City

With the biddable and winsome gone
the zoo is a graver place of sharp eyes and fangs.
The small and portable are piqued
they’ve been deserted here
and funnel spiders have long memories.
 
Cages were left unlatched
(the keepers were not beasts after all)
so everyone is free to come and go
at their own leisure and, well, peril.
Caimans have made Monkey Walk a no-go zone.
 
Inmates are balanced on their nerves
like high-wire acts within a wide cupola,
are scrappily made effigies of themselves
held out to the rain that leans in
before continuing its rounds.
 

Helen Ivory

published in chapbook, Maps of the Abandoned City, 2019, SurVision,
ISBN 1-912963-04-3

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