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Jane Ayres

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the poet

Jane Ayres re-discovered poetry while studying part-time for a Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent. Soon after, she was longlisted for the 2020 Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. The following year, Jane was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and became a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize (she also picked up an Honourable Mention in the 2022 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest). Twice nominated for Best of the Net, once for The Pushcart Prize, Jane has had her poetry published in more than 100 publications. She's also read her work for Eat the Storms, Upload, The Blue Door, Ó Bhéal, Medway River Lit and iamb. Her first collection, edible, appeared in 2022. Her most recent work is micro-chap, my lost womb still sings to me.

the poems

Giving my ex-boss
a hand job for £20
(mates rates)

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                        His request took me by surprise 

                        since I’d only invited him round for coffee 


                        making it clear there was to be no more sex. 

                        But at the time I was working four part-time jobs 


                        to pay my rent and cover the bills.

                        It really would be easy money 


                        (I told myself) and I was right

                        because it took my gloved hand 


                        just two minutes 

                        to achieve the desired outcome 


                        – less time than it took to write this poem.

                        Not a bad rate of pay


                        and to be honest, I wondered if 

                        he might want to make it a regular 


                        thing, although he said afterwards 

                        he usually had it done professionally.

final witness

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                                    this thing you did

                                    this thing

                                    this thing you did

                                    that splinters 

                                    needles

                                    gnaws

                                    claws

                                    caws

                                    calls you out

                                    calls you in

                                    burrows deep

                                    deeper

                                    seeps

                                    leaks

                                    loops

                                    leaches

                                    feeds

                                    this thing that

                                    taunts

                                    haunts

                                    hunts

                                    preys

                                    takes fright

                                    invites 

                                    the want 

                                    to do a good thing

                                    the right thing

                                    because the time you had

                                    the times we had

                                    the time you have

                                    dissolving

                                    wilting

                                    tilting

                                    twisting

                                    this thing

                                    this thing we did

requiem for an
age-inappropriate
lover

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                        i see you 


                        my body becomes cotton 

                        & the trickling wound will not heal or shut 


                        the knot in my back is spreading

                        loaded with sticky expectation


                        wearing my coming & going dress / firefly-bright 

                        a handful of knitted moments / charred seeds


                        just a little crush


                        in the bluebelled forest

                        hollow promises made easily 


                        the curve of your cheek / a buried moon / bone-white 

                        this hand / nettle-woven / pinking the sinuous hive


                        blurring the tongue-choked lines

                        scraping the chalky narrative


                        i’ll walk for miles to keep our secret

Publishing credits

Giving my ex-boss a hand job for £20 (mates rates):

  The Friday Poem (May 19th 2023)

final witness/requiem for an age-inappropriate lover:

  Cōnfingō Publishing (Spring 2021)

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