5 Poems by Isabelle Kenyon

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 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 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.

Wonder [Previously published in Sarasvati]

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.

Bioinfo

Isabelle Kenyon is a northern writer and the author of 5 chapbooks including Growing Pains (Indigo Dreams Publishing Ltd, 2020) and one short story with Wild Pressed Books (Short Story 'The Town Talks', 2020). She is the editor of Fly on the Wall Press, a socially conscious small press for chapbooks and anthologies. She has had poems and articles published internationally in journals such as Ink, Sweat and Tears and newspapers such as The Somerville Times and The Bookseller.

She has performed at Cheltenham Poetry Festival and Verbose, Manchester in 2020, Leeds International Festival as part of the 'Sex Tapes', Apples and Snakes' 'Deranged Poetesses' in 2019 and Coventry Cathedral's Plum Line Festival in 2018. She is a fierce dog and guinea pig lover and a confessed caffeine addict.