Touch-Me-Not
Ian Humphreys
this flower
doesn’t belong
on the canal
hiding
in an airless tunnel
where no-one goes
before dark
rooted
to a thin layer
of dirt
head bowed
butter bloom
an open mouth
that faint smell
of sherbet
when someone
passes
it brushes
a thigh
springs back
against the wall
careful
just one touch
triggers
a scattering
of seed
into the night
Touch-Me-Not is from Ian’s first collection, Zebra, and also featured in the anthology 100 Queer Poems – a Guardian Best Poetry Book of the Year in 2022.
About Ian Humphreys:
Ian Humphreys is Writer in Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. His latest poetry collection, Tormentil (Nine Arches Press) won a Royal Society of Literature ‘Literature Matters’ Award, and is a Yorkshire Times ‘Book of the Year’. His debut collection, Zebra (Nine Arches) was nominated for the Portico Prize. Ian is the editor of Why I Write Poetry, and the producer and co-editor of After Sylvia: Poems and Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath (both from Nine Arches). His work has been highly commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry, and he has written for the BBC.
