I can still smell soap bubbles in the scullery, steamy clean and floating through my early years; my grandmother’s hands red and hot, tea-towels boiling in the biggest pot as I turned the handle of the wringer, reminded always to ‘Mind your finger!’ I remember sitting on the back step while she raised the line […]
Category: Poems about Childhood and Youth
Back to School
In the first week of childhood’s September, going back to school was unreal, when I discovered a new sense of smell: I inhaled new uniform, shoes and plimsolls, and the scent of sharpened pencils in satchels. I breathed stale lost property masked with polish from parquet floors of classrooms and the hall; chalk-free blackboards and […]
Seaside Sonnet
The ice cream drip of summer days leaves sticky stains on memories steeped in salt and vinegar, candy floss, egg sandwiches and seaside rock. Faded black and white photos lack the sunny glare of beach towels, the welcome rainbow of parasols, barking dogs and beach balls bouncing in the sea and then the thrill of […]
Magnificent for a Moment
You spent years underground, a larva, your skin brittle and papery, vulnerable you built your cocoon in darkness as black as your carapace. I found you that day, a jet flash in the May sun basking in the heat of urban concrete. I admired your gloss and spectacular size, a stag among beetles ready to […]
She-Wolf
Crepuscular dawn of teenage-hood, tainted with tang of menses moon, invokes a howl of sprouting hair in places unexplored as yet. Nobody told us about freefall or the strange sweetness of explosions in the darkness, lit only by the wolfish teeth of a youthful smile. Kim M. Russell, 19th April 2018 sponse to The Poetry […]
A South London Childhood
Balconies and concrete stairs, beery piss in broken lifts, every night the same old prayers, someone get us out of here. Tightrope walking on the fence, leap the gap between the sheds, long walk to the traffic lights, sideswiped by a motorbike. Buttercups and dandelions crowd long grass by rusty gates; in the alley, shadows […]
Family Treasure
In the snapshot, you are smiling, the great uncle I knew for only a few years; yet I keep your photographs, nineteen-thirties monochrome, together with Neptune’s and Davy Jones’ endorsement of your initiation into the solemn mysteries of the deep. Seven years to the day before my mother’s birth, you sat on a boat bound […]
Bluebell Wood
Beech trees are coming into leaf, upper limbs foaming with translucent green leaves, softly crimped; all the spaces in between are dusted with bluebells and wood anemones. Lazuline seeps through branches, pools and floods: memories of childhood’s chimeless campanology and carpets of sky. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Poets United Midweek Motif ~ […]
Sitting on the bottom step…
I wondered what lurked in the landing’s shadows. I listened to the creak of breathing wood and the wash of my imagination’s shallows. I whispered to the upstairs ghosts mollifying volleys of hallos and showers of secrets and prayers – just making sure they stayed upstairs. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden […]
