at the back of the garden under the apple tree where gnarling branches finger fat poison fruit, the hum of summer bees collect rose-scented pollen, witch-tricked in sweetness. small hands gathered the flush of rhubarb, maiden pink with shame, snapped off, leaf-whipped for immersion in crumble and custard, cinnamon for seasoning, sugar to make the stem sweet, sugar to make the children sweet, butter to grease them like fat little pigs, slipping out of the grasp of the giant. sunday lunch with gravy and puddings and then comes dessert. fee fi fo fum I smell the blood of an english woman, locked in the bathroom, hiding from the post sunday roast wrath, the old peculiar-fueled yorkshireman snarling, echoing the roar of the engines of the telly as me and my sister turn up the volume of the formula one while the crumble blackens in the oven
Jem Henderson is a queer poet from Leeds, UK with an MA in Creative Writing from York St. John University. They have been published in Civic Leicester’s Black Lives Matter, Streetcake and recently won a Creative Future award for underrepresented writers. A book, Genderfux, including their work is due out in 2022 from Nine Pens. Their ramblings can be found on twitter @jem_face.