Julie Hogg is a poet and teacher with an MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University. She has had work published in many literary journals and magazines including Black Light Engine Room, Butcher’s Dog, Proletarian Poetry, StepAway Magazine and Well Versed. She has featured in anthologies by Ek Zuban, Litmus, Zoomorphic and ‘Writing Motherhood’ from Seren. Her debut pamphlet ‘Majuba Road’ is available from Vane Women Press.

Honi soit qui mal y pense

This Hallowe’en Lolita,

guardian angel in a pocket,

sister’s suedette bodice,

spider-startle-eyes, today

her Mam was sterilised

while a guy in the kitchen

stroked her hair and told her

to not come home until she’d

made a fiver, and another

swore before he caught her,.

threw away her blue inhaler,

skimmed a rocket at her feet,

lit a sparkler, burnt her cheek

like those slaps in flats when

a California sunset projected

onto white Time Rain render,

from that gelded boulevard,

and she thought she saw her

Dad’s face in a standard lamp

epiphany on the seventh floor.