Two Poems by Ian Humphreys

Rope-grown mussels

That first morning
by the docks
we hardly spoke to each other.
Do you remember
the laughing fisherman?
How we helped
unload his harvest.
Eight overfull
washing-up bowls
dowsed and clinking
like broken crockery.
He called the farms
high-rise living for shellfish.
They prefer it
to the seabed, he said.
Grow twice as big.
No predators, see.
We plunged in wrist deep
appalled
by the slipperiness.
Back at the house
you found a sword-shaped
letter opener
in a hinged tin box
and scraped off
barnacles
from some of the shiny
black molluscs.
Shallots. Chopped parsley.
A good bottle.
Striking lucky
with the last Cook’s Match.
Pressing our fingers
against half-closed lips
to gently prise open
mouth
after wine-warmed mouth.
And inside each one
a tongue plump
with sweetness and salt.

Mouse-ear Hawkweed

The herb bruised and bound to any cut or wound
doth quickly close the lips thereof.
– Nicholas Culpeper

Skirting the gravel pits of Dungeness –
a creeping yellow-headed plant
that resembles Tormentil.
Close-up, its blooms are larger, blousier,
more like small dandelions.
Yet this too is known for healing wounds.
What is it about tiny yellow flowers?
The way they scatter through spring grass,
a thin gauze of lemon magic. If only
there were enough of them to swathe
the earth. To close the lips. To hush
the hushed scream. But no –
I think instead of a woman’s lips
pressed against a child’s red-raw shin.
The sharpness of that pebble beach.
Hythe, 1970. I’m there, there, there.

Ian Humphreys lives in West Yorkshire. His debut collection Zebra (Nine Arches Press) was nominated for the Portico Prize. His work is widely published in journals, including The Poetry Review, and he has written for the BBC. Awards include first prize in the Hamish Canham Prize and highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry. Ian is the editor of Why I Write Poetry (Nine Arches Press, 2021), and the producer and co-editor of After Sylvia (Nine Arches Press, 2022) – an anthology of poems and essays inspired by Sylvia Plath.