You can find new developments at http://helendring.wordpress.com

September 2009:

Helen's short serial fiction piece, 'Summer at the Grand' has been selected to appear in an online anthology. You can download the 2009 Spotlight anthology at http://declarations4c.wordpress.com

March 2010

I recently read these poems at Dead Good Poets Society, and afterwards, a few people asked me where they could find them online. So, for those lovely kind people, here is my set from March 3rd, 2010.

Wolflet.

She wanted wolf cubs.
Not kittens,
Not husky pups
Given as infant gifts with
Red bows around their scraggy necks.
No, she wanted wolf cubs,
Even when it grew to
Pace the length of her hallway -
Proud as men -
She could not love it.
What she wanted was a wolf -
Fresh from the womb
And newly vicious.
She wanted baby tongues
Rough against her face as she fed them,
Not a puppy and a dog bowl.

He ripped the skin from her shoulders,
Clawed imprints into her hip,
Bit her lip without sympathy.
She mewed against his chest
And whispered a secret, desperate plea
For a wolf cub that would hurt the way he did.

Full Stops

The hardest thing of all was to wrap you,
Shivering and cold,
Into the blankets of parentheses,
To confine lost kisses to a question mark.
You I learned by lust, not grammar,
Your collar bones written
Under layers of my epidermis.
We were verbs -
Not static nouns
But all action gerunds -
Falling, aching, wanting, hating.
I redefined us as a colon.

Stolen Valentines

I stole the onion.
I tried kisses, silk, whispers,
Even garlic -
Thinking that something would
Tighten you against my chest.
I tried other kinds of rings,
Other powers,
Other I love yous whispered close against your skin.
I hid peppercorns in your shoes,
Hoping my makeshift stones would make you stay.
The onion was all I had,
Hung above the door, stolen from another poet.
‘It’s yours if you stay’.
You squashed it against the carpet as you left.