Jane Ayres – Two Poems
scar tissue
girl caught
red-handed
paired / pared
rosebladed
is your heart racing?
give it to me
hinged
we are all porous
insidious
keeping secrets
turns you
into someone
some thing
you don’t want
to become
lost & broken
it has to be out
all rage & guilt
washed
into the water
cleansed
of every
dark stain
bottle it
drink
or give it back to him
UK based neurodivergent writer Jane Ayres re-discovered 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 2021, she was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize. Work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her micro-chapbook my lost womb still sings to me is available from Porkbelly Press.
Artwork (Haiga): Complicated by Diane Lowman
Diane Lowman is an award-winning essayist, memoirist, and poet. She served as Westport, CT’s inaugural Poet Laureate from 2019-2022. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine; Brain, Child; and Brevity Blog, and she writes a regular column, Everything’s an Essay. Her first memoir, Nothing But Blue was published in 2018, and her latest, The Undiscovered Country: Seeing Myself Through Shakespeare’s Eyes, was published September 2023. Diane received her MA in Shakespeare Studies from the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute in 2017. She has explored other forms of literary expression in more than 2,500 haiku and in essays on and reviews of Shakespeare’s plays in various academic publications. Diane teaches writing, Shakespeare, and yoga, and divides her time between her hometown of Westport, CT, and her home away from home in Stratford Upon Avon, England.
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