Helen Burke has been a published poet in magazines and anthologies for the last 20 years.  
She is currently appearing at Ilkley Lit. Fest  and Beverley Literature Festival.  
She is also a visual artist and is currently studying an M.A. in Literature Studies at 
the College of Ripon and York St. John. 
 

Full Fruit Salad

Dear Peach
I would like to be strawberry
to your cream.
You are grapes I note
(but not of wrath, I hope)
Myself I have been lone tangerine for too long.
I am keen to apricot with you
as am quite fresh and luscious
at present moment.
Your old kiwi
has snuggled up 
with new banana –
(or so I hear..)
Are you a man or a mandarin ?

My lychees await your quick response.




The Crab-apple Drunk

Outside in the railway-dark
He has become a crab-apple.
On all trunky-fours
He crawls around the buffet-bar.
“Where is my tree ?” he asks us.
“My beautiful crab-apple tree ?  my family ??”
I can see his face looking at my face 
In the glass in the door.
For a moment our faces become one.
I become a crab-apple.
I can feel the gold of the mothy-leaves 
Against my mouth.
I can see the space I fall through – and keep falling.
I can feel the wizened flesh of my heart,
The squeezing of the wire on my plump world
As they cut me free
To land here where I know no-one
And the way home has become too far and too dark.
Then.  Our faces in the glass separate and the rustling tree
Is lost to me.
There is the scent of apples about his going.
My own strange bark in the neon light is envious and pale.