S.A. Leavesley is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and journalist. Overton Poetry Prize winner 2015, her pamphlet, How to Grow Matches, was published by Against the Grain Press in 2018. She has been published by the Financial Times and The Guardian, on Worcestershire buses and in the Blackpool Illuminations. An occasional climber and surfer, she also loves swimming, cycling, walking and being outdoors.
Still the Apple
His mouth moon-craters my flesh,
curves tiny ribbons in flushed skin.
After gorging, he holds my skeleton
to the light, peers through small slits
between the ribs in search of a heart.
He does not find one, only the rust-
brown of the scalloped wounds left
by his teeth. Later, I’ll bleed black.
For him, little change now, except
his lips’ sometimes strained shape,
weighted down by past sweetness.
S.A. Leavesley
First published in Envoi, then in plenty-fish (Nine Arches Press)
The Disappearing River, Stream, Trickle by S.A. Leavesley
A Planet Where by S.A. Leavesley
