With wing beats eiderdown slow, wild geese create a river, an open sky of feathers. One drops, a stone, a twist and it regains control, stomach up, gliding on its back. A moment of disorder and the unpicked skein weaves into plump finger quotes. Kim M. Russell, 7th April, 2018 My response to The Poetry […]
Category: Poems
Alphabet Shadows
There was no ABC, nothing in between those hopeful letters and the finality of XYZ. Just shadows of words that could have been. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Camera FLASH! ~ The April Edition Kerry says it’s time to strike a pose again with a photographic challenge for […]
Shower Curtain
We had a bathtub, simple, with scrolled edge, rack for soap and flannels. The only shower I’d seen was in a chilly row of cubicles, in changing rooms at school and the local swimming baths: pools on the floor, no privacy. A shower with a curtain was new to me. It was pink and pretty-patterned […]
Fan
I am weighty enough to buffet a heavy cloud of unwritten words gathered around her head. Her mouth itches with unspoken secrets – I am a token, an inky symbol brushed onto my bamboo ribs. She folds me into myself, from half moon to crescent, from foot to golden lotus, a message to be sent. […]
Red Shoes
Heels tapped on the pavement, cracked red patent flashed ’Stop!’ but she could only go despite the pinch on her little toe and the blisters rubbed raw by red shoe leather, lucky pumps borrowed from her sister. No shoes of her own, no trainers, boots or sandals to her name; everything sold to fund her […]
Yearning for Mist
Now that lambing storms are done, showers alternate with sun, teasing early honeysuckle to stretch tendrils studded with gem-like buds in pear drop pinks and yellows. Pert and youthful, they raise a smile but I yearn for the mellow shades of autumn, the russet, the ochre, and the artistry of soft, dissolving, misty mornings, and […]
A Victorian Rose
I have an old, brown carved box, daily polished but never locked; the lid is broken and tied with a string but I treasure it above everything. In it I keep little squares of paper, mapped with grey mildew spatter, with hair inside, and a little picture with a saying from the holy scripture, which […]
Writing in Tongues
I trill in notes of birdsong I laugh in springs and streams I bark with dogs and muntjacs join owl and fox with screams sometimes I breathe in purrs sometimes I growl with rage when my pen clots with feral blood as it wrestles on the page but when it flows, it’s a crashing wave […]
Widdershins around the willow…
past a clump of daffodils, wild and self-willed, tangled in the tall grass where the bindweed grows. In corkscrew branches, a sunlit wood pigeon mutters a throaty warning for pilgrims to this place of Salix magic where Nature is budding green curtains of respectability to replace her tattered rags of dignity. Kim M. Russell, 3rd […]
Against Grief
It sits on my shoulder, craving attention; I try to ignore the surreptitious tears it draws from my soul’s well, and snot green bile so bitter it chokes. It puts up a fence around happy memories; I have to tear it down, time after time, posts and nails, tangled barbed wire. It rewrites stories; they’re […]
writing in north norfolk 