creased up at the foot of the bed, hugging to itself the scent of you, a scent that it releases and exudes as I fold it tenderly Kim M. Russell My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Poems in April – Poetry through the eyes of Carol Ann Duffy A big welcome to Sanaa, […]
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
Wichita Wife
She was a Wichita wife, married to a lineman: years of mending holes in overalls stitching up their life and waiting for his calls. Now she trudges lonely roads, past sagging wires and endless lines of poles, straight as the hems she used to sew. She heads west towards the fire of the setting sun, […]
American Sentences in the Rain
My first time in New York, by the Hudson, under a black umbrella. So much rain, waterlogged shoes, and Miss Liberty draped in cloud and fog. Open umbrellas in an open-topped bus, watercolour city. Dodging puddles on Fifth Avenue, we found shelter under awnings. New York dripping in my ears, American sentences in the rain. […]
Malevolent, Me?
You may think me obsequious, creepy and cadaverous, a hand-wringing usurer and sly blackmailer, but I did it all for love. I cannot help the alabaster hands that manipulate my master, the delicate brows and lashes framing blood red eyes. I know I am despised. My name may sound infectious, possibly pernicious, but it’s an […]
Paradise Cobbled
Cobbles have been laid over paradise With stables for carriages and horses, Bawdy taverns, markets, court masques and plays. Life does not follow preordained courses, Cherishing what you have is good practice For tomorrow may well be its demise. Cobbles have been laid over paradise With stables for carriages and horses; They have taken an […]
Night Hawks
Tall buildings shadow pavements, squinting their windows against light that spills from an insomniac Manhattan diner. Anonymous at a timeless hour, customers sit at the cherry wood counter with dirty coffee cups and a hankering for cherry pie, sugar to take the sour edge off a night of cigarettes and alcohol. Smoky thoughts curl […]
Friday Night at the Cardiff Novotel
(after Philip Larkin’s ‘Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel) Light spreads brightly downwards from the wide- screen television between high windows that face the car park, where taxi headlights flare. At the bar, men in short-sleeved t-shirts flash tattoos, down beery dregs and, glancing at the score, jostle in a noisy exit. Receptionists issue […]
Many are called…
but few are chosen in the symmetry and ritual, the circle of life and death, from the first gasp at birth to the very last breath. Fresh grass grows on mountains through snow and stones; saplings take root in graves among crumbling bones; new life and innocence bring hope and vision. Many are called but […]
Poetic Purring
At peep of morning I hear the soft pad of a poem on the bedroom floor. A darker shadow sharpens in the gloom of my room and jade gems burn amber in strengthening beams of light. Verbs of velvet paws, sharp nouns and adjectives of claws swipe and glint at dust motes forming into stanzas. […]
Hylas and the Nymphs
She is shameless in her intention, that nameless nymph with titian hair, skin soft and luminous, her tender grip upon his arms, offering her charms. She will not let him go. He sees the flash of light on translucent green water, lapping and trickling on the flawless skin of these woodland daughters, their long hair […]
writing in north norfolk 