Such a joy as a boy, uniformed yet unashamed, now newly named, I admire how you wear the sequinned word, your coiffured hair, and the self-made vintage dress. Your chiffon body drifts in clouds of perfume, rouge stains and clothes your lips, and femininity inhabits your curvaceous hips. Kim M. Russell, 16th June 2020 My […]
Month: June 2020
Roll Up
I haven’t smoked for years and sometimes miss sprinkling aromatic Drum tobacco on transparent paper, rolling them between my fingers, the lick, the kiss of flame, the inhalation as it ignites the tip – but not the frustration of peeling paper from my lip. Kim M. Russell, 15th June 2020 My response to dVerse Poets […]
A Little Love Song
You embrace us in your hills and pastures, and suckle us from softly gleaming rivers. You nurture us with fruit, plant and grain, and show us how to grow them all again. You teach us how to flourish together like trees in forests and birds of a feather. And what do we give you in […]
Peaceful Protest
Today, I woke to daisies, their childish sunny faces embroidered in the buzz cut of yesterday’s mown grass. Escaping from the tendrils of untamed honeysuckle, an anarchy of roses, peaceful and perfumed, dew-washed and breeze- blown, outside a writer’s room. Nature bears no banners scrawled with hateful phrases, she demonstrates her power with branch, thorn […]
Broken
van Gogh wrote: ‘The conscience is a man’s compass.’ Our compass broke, we have no common sense or sentience, and Earth is barely turning – into a bad joke. We harvest palm oil and rainforests choke, oceans on this so-called blue planet are drowning in a mass of plastic, and fur-coated men grin as polar […]
Fieldwork – a new anthology
A poem of mine has been included in a new anthology of East Anglian nature writing, which is now available to pre-order from the UEA Publishing Project. https://www.ueapublishingproject.com/product-page/field-work
Fancy!
I have a poem in this month’s issue of Visual Verse, and I’m in great company again, including Jane Dougherty and Frank Hubeny, to name but two of the writers. I really like the sepia-toned image by an unknown artist (circa 1880) from the Getty Open Content Program, which inspired me to write something lighthearted. […]
Tingle
Ice-cold loneliness numbed her body and soul, shielded her heart, with starry snowflakes. With her eyes the colour of slush after snow, embrangled in winter’s undertow, her personal winter drifted into spring, hoar frost still sparkled on everything like a silver Midas touch, until she found a crow, ebony black, stiff on the ground. She […]
Alice’s Grave
Marked only by a rusted cross of curlicues among rows of lichen-covered stones, your final resting place has churchyard hues, this peaceful housing of your crumbled bones. I know your name, Alice, when you were born and the date of your last breath. Not a trace of family, no husband or child left to mourn. […]
No More Red
Although in our hearts and souls a fire has taken hold, crimson only burns up the canvas, fuels and lights the war, sticky as blood, congealing the soil and nothing nourishing will grow. The verdure of peace is a welcome balm, it cools the heat and keeps us calm. Kim M. Russell, 9th June 2020 […]
writing in north norfolk 