Paper Portent

When the poet from Porto
lost his treasured notebook
his head started to feel
like a blood-filled bath.

It wasn’t the loss of shopping list
or the plot for his next novel
that most preoccupied the mind,

just the writerly thought about the
paper-based metaphor for death.

Asparagus Dreams

In my dream
I was attempting to
eat asparagus
without cutlery
or a full set of teeth;

a futile exercise, as it turns out.

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Henry is a writer, poet and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. He has a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. His latest poetry collection, Psychobabble and Snake Oil, is a collaboration about mental health with Dutch artist Marcel Herms and is available from Egalitarian Publishing.