created for Jen Feroze

Jen, along with Rachel Morgan, are the joint custodians of a monthly Open Mic event at North on Leigh Broadway. This space is a beautiful, welcoming Open Mic environment, which also happens to serve the best Cheese (and Ham) Toasties in the entire kingdom.

Jen has become a very good friend over the last year or so: her level-headedness and general common sense attitude to everything is a great buffer for someone who likes setting metaphorical fires wherever possible.

She’s also an outstanding poet.

From supporting on her Award-winning pamphlet launch last year (picture below) to getting to read new work ahead of everyone else, there’s a great deal to be grateful for. Her work forces me to pick up my game. I have learnt so much in the last year.

I am a better poet when sharing.

This is a Golden Shovel, after my favourite poem from A Dress with Deep Pockets.

---

Overstuffed

---

---

That night, heterogenous halves became a we
both made sure that there was nothing left,
and only now the damage that this did

has become apparent as disparity. I
ate too much of everything, you see
and only when the sickness left, accepting how

I warped the shape of us beyond repair, we’d
overdone both sides and appetisers. Had I been
more careful in the choices, had I better shaped

not stuffed myself on everything too hot...
If there’d been a single filling dish as
sustenance, perhaps I’d not have blown

a relationship I should have held like glass;
never meant to be perfect, but instead forged,
on meagre appetites, never gorge-made.

---

---

Poem copyright S. Reeson © 2026

---

Prohibition on Use of Work in AI.

For avoidance of doubt, the Author reserves the rights to this publication. No part of this publication can be utilised or reproduced for the purposes of assisting artificial intelligence technologies. © 2026

---