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Julie Stevens
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the poet
Julie Stevens writes poems that cover many themes, often engaging with or involving the problems of disability. Her work can be found in journals such as Ink Sweat & Tears, The Honest Ulsterman and Strix, as well as in volumes from Broken Sleep Books and Indigo Dreams Publishing. Julie has published three pamphlets with The Hedgehog Poetry Press – Journey Through the Fire, Step into the Dark and Balancing Act – plus her chapbook Quicksand with Dreich.
the poems
Piano Practice
It’s never black and white.
Each note may wrap you in the skin of a newborn,
scratch at years with a harrowing call
or send you humming through the doors at work.
When she played, the piano sent time scurrying
to find hours that the day had lost,
pages that were never read and light
now dimming, losing centre stage.
A master of the keys was her doing
waking a night with the clutch of Brahms,
Debussy winding through each morning’s stretch
and another three hours packed with fingers alight.
For years it was always her
bringing the whip to my young hands,
a bleeding insight into notes that waited,
a battle to race with those elegant turns.
They’d stand behind singing words to celebrate
call on me to find music to cheer,
but all I felt was the sting of their breath
shooting syllables into broken fingers.
Why I Don’t
Like Kippers
I sensed they were coming
when the stench rose up the staircase −
a flood of foul-smelling slime
that knew just how to net me.
Noxious flapping, dives and smoky fins
around they went, swamped today’s sweet breath.
She urged me to try this ocean sick,
swore a healthy body should be full of gills,
that I should swim by her side, copy her ways,
hook a life with only her in charge.
A wave of hate saw me jump through portholes,
my belly would retch, whilst on this sea bed.
A call from downstairs made me slide on scales,
washed me nearer my salty seat.
I sat, I moaned, found the perfect bowl of cereal,
but my spoon was always full of stinking kippers.
Them
I lived with the volume high,
anchored between their protests
and stillness,
which never turned them off.
I lived with my head buried.
I didn’t want to take
their problems with me,
nor judge and deliver
the awful verdict.
The shouting floored the house.
The sudden lurch of a room
knocked me into a bedroom cell.
I lived with their weapons,
their fights;
conflicts were nailed down hard
in my head.
The fear of what could come next
was always present.
It lived with me,
but the real me
was never there.
Publishing credits
Piano Practice / Why I Don't Like Kippers:
Journey Through the Fire (The Hedgehog Poetry Press)
Them: Flights (Issue Nine)