This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from my lost womb still sings to me by Jane Ayres (Porkbelly Press 2023).
care taker / private property
light agitates the darkness
digesting fur-mentation
moments inedible
indelible / maceration
making word bundles
from the white of old teeth
i am emptying
mothersmother
traumastorm
hollowing the vessel
see
want
take
flesh
bone
breath there’s blood in the water
lacerations / the memory of a thing
more real than the thing itself
sniffing at the way the light still
shines / stringing the lines
watching your cadence
drawing a veil
i am empty
but my hunger
grows
UK-based neurodivergent writer Jane Ayres rediscovered poetry studying for a part-time Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent, which she completed in 2019 at the age of 57. In 2020, she was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize and in 2021, she was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize. Her first collection edible was published by Beir Bua Press (July 2022). Her micro-chapbook my lost womb still sings to me was published by Porkbelly Press in October 2023. Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications and can be heard on Eat the Storms, Upload, Blue Door to the Cosmos, O Bhéal and Medway River Lit.
Layla Lenhardt is the author of the full-length poetry collection Mother Tongue (Main Street Rag 2023). She is an alumna of the Firefly Farms Residency and a member of the Sundress Reader Board. She is currently working on her second full length poetry collection Little Spoon, and she is an MFA candidate at IU.
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