-Whitby Abbey, photo by Paul Brookes

Deadly Nightshade

We lay outside the old Cathedral.
Ancient & Modern, Mediaeval.
Tourists say we look ‘wan’, and
‘under the weather’.
I mumble (tongue and teeth)
‘whatever’.

Mouthwater Memories. The Love We Made.
Never afraid of Deadly Nightshade.

Your lips so red. Your skin so pale.
Unabashedly Ashen Madonna.
So unafraid of Belladonna.

Policeman tells us to ‘move on’.
Public Spaces and Questions.
Can’t they see the future that’s brewing?
‘People pay to see these ruins’.

Close to the stones, living on shade.
We never rue the love we made.

Still unafraid of Deadly Nightshade.

-Ivor Daniel

The Secret Stuffer

-Gill Winn

Bios and Links

-Ivor Daniel

lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope,
wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The
Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press and The Dawntreader. Right now (May 2022) he has
poems forthcoming in After…, Alien Buddha, Block Party, Re-Side, The Orchard Lea
Anthology (Cancer) and The Crump’s Barn Anthology (Halloween). .
@IvorDanie