Melissa Lee-Houghton

Biography

I am a Next Generation 2014 Poet. I have published two poetry collections with Penned in the Margins, titled A Body Made of You and Beautiful Girls, the latter of which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2013. A previous book-length poem, Patterns of Mourning was published by Chipmunka Publishing in 2009. A third poetry collection is pending for publication and I am also writing a book of prose and a novel.

Samples

Blowjob After a trip to the corner shop for some cigarettes and a bag of razors the girls move onto the red light district where the jagged night excites them and punters crawl up like crocodiles eyeing up the flesh, ready to roll. They get in a car, a little blue run-around- they say £20, but Debbie can’t get it up and Marie is still a virgin. In the end, between them it’s done and they share a self-congratulatory bag of salted chips on a park bench at midnight in June- fella said they’d better get some practice if they were gonna take it serious, like- and from where they are sat they can see the whole world, the whole night the whole sky rippling out from behind their heads- stars, dynamite light, dripping with explosions- Marie thinks for a moment about alien life, and Debbie thinks for a moment about love. All they have left is a police ride back to the asylum where they can take their scars and their mental illnesses and go fuck themselves

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.