VI Pentacles
Helen Ivory

The dog moon lolls belly up
on the floor of the sky
and a trick of the light
has cast on its side
a lion wearing a crown
like the old ten pence piece.

Hands reach up to the sky
from the land of the dead
and someone is busking
on a low pennywhistle
and a bear is dancing
chained up by its nose.

It’s dull from the beer
and cannot remember
the steps for the dance
though the dead egg him on
with their bone dry applause,
and the moon turns away.

Helen Ivory is a poet and assemblage/collage artist. Her fourth Bloodaxe Books collection is Waiting for Bluebeard. She is an editor for The Poetry Archive and edits the webzine Ink Sweat & Tears. She teaches for The Poetry School, The Arvon Foundation and The Poetry Society. She is Course Director for the Continuing Education programme in Creative Writing for UEA and Writers’ Centre Norwich. And she is co-editor with George Szirtes of In their Own Words: Contemporary Poets on their Poetry (Salt, 2012)

The poem is from a sequence I am writing as a collaborative Tarot card pack with the painter Tom de Freston.

Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter.
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