‘Nymphoma’ is a poem by Tessa Foley about a late childhood friend from Portsmouth High School, Kent Road It was published in The Writers Cafe Magazine (2018).

Nymphoma

My buttons talk to the girl in the Earth, she is smiling
With her stuffed otter startled and
Locked in glass case with berries and twigs.

Lonely in the forest with a cur, Maybelle gives a truck
A money for its run and come and come she does
Ball bare feet on the hotty soil,

I heard her when she sat and wrote a letter, allowed it to
Be a '
Doo-
Dear
Ron
Ron', and gone was he next,
Her text as blister blue, who do you suppose she is?

Sat, pretending to be comfy on wet bark that passes
For a bough, cow clumsy but facewise benign and shining,
And in the off moments, pre-raphaelite graceful,

She's got reality dirt on her clear, coned nails and unfurls
Posing pictures, there are clicks and she swears
At her hair, skull cooking under fronds of misunderstood wig,

All belief that this summer fruit is winter in the park at the top of Tea Pie,
And some cry because she might never stumble again,
Some were men, some were boys as they found her mud tracks.

But she's back, flickering in amongst the beeches, pages,
I think I catch her eye from time to climbing, feet on sideways
On a midget tree and me, she sees me.

Tessa Foley is an important figure in the contemporary Portsmouth poetry scene. Originally from Flitwick, a tiny town in Bedfordshire, she lived in Portsmouth from later childhood, and gained her Master's degree in Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth, where she now works as an administrator. Published by magazines including Agenda, Antiphon, and Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, and recognised in the Verve Poetry Competition and Bristol Poetry Prize, she won the Live Canon International Single Poem Competition in 2013. Her debut collection Chalet Between Thick Ears was launched in November 2018 at the Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden and she has since read from the collection at several prestigious locations including the Greenwich Library, Harbour Books, Whitstable, and the Boulevard Theatre in Soho. Tessa also produced the collection Garden, with her sister, Anna Foley, as the illustrator. Garden was created to raise funds for Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Counselling Service, a charity for which both sisters volunteered.

Chalet Between Thick Ears can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chalet-Between-Thick-Tessa-Foley/dp/1909703389

ENTRY: Dr Mark Frost, Department of English Literature, University of Portsmouth.
If you have any comments or suggestions please email: mark.frost@port.ac.uk