The sickle moon fell from the sky, having lost its lustre, hurtled through clouds and trees, and hit Earth with a clang – not a bang. It caught a fecund woman’s eye; claiming it before a sister, she got down on her knees and, feeling no disgrace, bound it to her face. That led to […]
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
Inside a book…
the mind is free to wander, explore unfamiliar places, push boundaries of space and time, suspend disbelief and hide between the covers, meet new friends and lovers, populate brave new worlds. Pages and seasons turn and so we learn that when a book is closed and night shadows teem, the contents continue to wander through […]
Decadence
Through shades of monochrome aureate decadence glimmers: feathered turban shimmers; richly embroidered sleeve and shoulder spark white and grey, a hint of gold. But her eyes are hidden embers, cold, old. Kim M. Russell, 5th May 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Camera FLASH! Kerry says it’s time to strike a pose […]
Clean Hands and Clean Feet
I’m delighted that I have another ekphrastic poem in Volume 5, Chapter 7 of the Visual Verse Anthology. You can find it on page 11 or you can follow the link to ‘Clean Hands and Clean Feet‘.
Frida’s Reality
“I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” Frida Kahlo Mexican heat invades each night, pervades the frangible seams and transmutes dreams to nightmares, thickly oiling the barren landscape vivid, livid with pain. Morning arrives again with the promise of reality, a canvas to daub with certainty self-portraits of her truth. Kim M. Russell, […]
Uncubing Tesseract
A triplet of notes, a single wavering flame echoed by another in a gust of melody. Hush of voice unweathered modulates light and promise tethered by emotional tourniquet until the song spreads wings and skips on time changes like glottal stops. The volume dies, almost to a whisper, and a syncopated drum contains the pressure […]
One brief moment
It vanished in a whorl of icy bubbles, a kingfisher, the first one of the spring. It drew a line through early morning mist, it punctuated silence of the pond with splash and sparkle – then it disappeared. I waited by the river every day, my soles imprinted on the dew-soaked grass, to catch a […]
Rubai of Light
The moon is a balloon that fills the night which bursts with stars and constellations bright, reminding late night lovers of the dawn whose fingers shatter dreams with early light. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Variations on the Rubaiyat This week our host for Meeting the Bar […]
Medusa’s Wedding
A hiss of hair uncoils from its lavish cage of silk and lace, interwoven with gold and silver threads. She guards her stare, lowers turquoise lids, her coated lashes brush pale powered skin. Friends and family gather in the registry office hall and she has a sinking feeling, a foreshadow of tragedy. Then he’s standing […]
An Ode to Heath Robinson
Steam-powered with boilers and kettles heated by spirit lamps and candles, with tangled pulleys of knotted string, they survive the incessant tinkering of overall-clad bespectacled men who hope their inventions will work now and then, refreshing stale scones and removing warts, throwing water over neighbourhood cats, complicating the simplest technique – a genius of the […]
writing in north norfolk 