Jessica Boatwright’s pamphlet ‘Burst’ came third in the Best Unpublished Pamphlet category of the 2025 Disabled Poets Prize.

Abstinence is one of the pieces that features in the pamphlet.

The Disabled Poets Prize looks to find the best work created by UK-based deaf and disabled poets.

Abstinence

Pleasure these days

requires an exiting

of the body.

I bag up my bones

and climb inside

a honeybee skin,

suck mustard flowers

with my whole mouth,

vibrate with dulcet humming.

Youth arrives as a ghost

while I feast sweetness

away from glass eyed staring,

plump the spaces

between my stripes

without sly whisperings.

I catch happiness

wisping from

between my molars.

It will be necessary

to close the bone bag

more tightly.

About Jessica Boatwright

Jessica Boatright’s poems are published or forthcoming in magazines including Magma, Anthropocene, Full House Literary and Pulse, as well as in various anthologies. In 2024 she was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (Flash) and the Spelt Nature Poetry Competition. Jessica is part of the Writing East Midlands Momentum Scheme 23/24 and is founder of “Raising The Fifth,” a curated creative space for people without children. She writes from a colourful house in Lincolnshire where she lives with her cat.