99. Jenni Thorne

Explorer of the weight of the ordinary, shaped by the lessons of the past

Jenni Thorne is a writer from the Black Country in the UK. She was the winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line journals including Starbeck Orion, Ink Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection.

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky

Poems

Rage
Icicle on the Allotment tap
Ghost in Feathers
Smoke on the Argent Water
The Enemy Within my Nest
Hunger

Rage

Don’t you dare tell me to breathe.
I’ll inhale your tepid patience,
spit it back, acid-hot.
I’ll eviscerate empathy.
Make it scream.
 
This isn’t your teachable moment.
I am a wasp nest in a ribcage.
A snarl wrapped in skin.
A gagged mouth full of knives.
 
I’ll shred your calm words to ribbons,
wear them like ruined trophies.
I want to lash out.
Fight.
Bite.
Punch until there’s blood.
I want the world to flinch when I blink.
 
I am inelegant, ignoble rage.
Dysfunctional, guttural, ugly, useless.
A feral beast, twitching in the corner,
gnawing itself raw in relentless frustration.
 
I am the scream behind the sneer.
The bite behind the breath.
The hate-fuelled storm seething inside.
Thunder flashing,
pounding rage.


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Icicle on the Allotment Tap

An icicle clings to the verdigris tap,
thin as a witch’s finger,
growing slow from the stubborn heartbeat
of a drip that refuses to stop.
Each drop a tiny, trembling planet,
freezing mid-fall,
a moment arrested.

Around it, the allotment sleeps
under winter’s hush.
Frost furrows the soil
with silver-white seams;
shed windows bloom with ferns,
delicate as pressed lace.

A forgotten trowel leans against the fence,
white teeth around its rim,
its wooden handle swollen,
balancing pearls of frozen dew.

The icicle lengthens in silence,
a glass dagger
splitting shy sunlight
into dancing rainbows.

Beneath the frozen beds,
seeds wait,
trusting that thaw will come.

But for now,
the world is held in suspension,
and the icicle hangs:
a single note
in a winter song.


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Ghost in Feathers

The barn walls drink the last of the light.
Shadows bloom like bruises across the beams.
The swallows sleep in cloistered hush;
the oxblood tractor ticks,
a cooling beast slain at sunset. 

Moths rise, dust-winged,
erratically searching 
for the memory of light.
Spiders unfurl their wire legs,
threading tremors through webs.
Bats spill from broken gables,
their flight a soft percussion 
through the dark. 

The barn's hushed breath is silenced.
But the night's chorus is not complete. 
One nocturnal spectre lingers.
Watching.
Seeing all. 

Talons unfurl, rusted hooks sear 
through feathers pale as bone.
She ends her vigil with a haunted cry,
and the scuttling things below
wonder if they are the who she calls for. 

There is no fanfare, only death on wing.
Silent, surgical, inevitable.
Rending flesh, she claims her prize,
then slips between the rafters,
folding into their oaken skin. 

Though night wanes, she remains:
perched, unmoving, unblinking.
Waiting. 
A ghost in feathers.


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Smoke on the Argent Water

We climbed through the Old Man’s 
misted, Arcadian heights,  
Boots brushing serpentine paths 
Edged with scripted curls of bracken. 
The taste of rust and pine in the air.

Above the tree line,  
The world turns cerulean.
A sky drawn taut with silence,  
Listening to the last breath of summer.  

We found the tarn – a mirror of argent,  
Cradled within precipitous, 
Grass-clad arms, 
And the wind paused 
As we sat within the silver-still basin.

Shoulder to shoulder.
Sharing a cigarette
And our versions of the future, 
While light steeped everything in amber.

Smoke rose in a slow ribbon  
Threading through the chill,  
And I watched it weave itself  
Into the turbulent shape of memory.


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The Enemy Within My Nest

It began with small things.
A word left hanging in the air
longer than it should,
a silence that didn’t fit
the room it lived in. 

Someone was watching us
from the soft places
where trust sleeps.
I felt their presence tucked neatly
between familiar voices,
blending with the rhythm of our days,
learning the shape
of comfort. 

I searched for the intruder
in every face I loved,
yet still the wrongness
tightened its grip,
a quiet hand
at the back of my mind, 
until, in the hush 
of the hallway mirror, 
the truth settled. 

The familiar eyes.
The practised smile.
The bitter reflection
I kept trying to outrun.


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Hunger

I am the quivering tongue
aching to follow the warm, hidden map
your skin draws in the half-light.

I am the pulsing lips
seeking the soft refuge of your kiss,
greedy to borrow your warmth
as night gathers around us.

I am the glistening teeth
restless with the urge
to graze that place
where your pulse rises
to meet my unyielding bite.

I am the mouth that whispers
of needs and flawed vows,
but cannot bear the bitter salt
of the longing it tastes.

I am the heat of a shared breath, 
suspended between us, 
waiting for the moment when 
wanting becomes touch,
and touch becomes devouring.


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