Feet bounce echoes off the iron bridge in a language we don’t understand, unlike the fluent water beneath. We walk hand in hand, gripping tightly, afraid to leave our love behind with all the other padlocked hearts. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Photo Challenge #207 In November 2016, I wrote a […]
Category: Poems
Cracked Shell
On the paved path under the glossy bay tree, newly fallen from a nest, the jagged crack of half a freckled sky blue eggshell tears a hole in the day like a spring morning chorus of anxious mother birds, beaks open in raucous warning. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My poem for the dVerse Poets Pub […]
Unturning Worms
How the helminth of malice squirms! A gangly parasitic worm, it knocks us out of orbit and turns us hard-hearted. We glide in our inchoate masks, our faces smile but inside we bask in misery. Searching for company, we find the imperative of ignominy; it puts us in the public lens and misery’s company has […]
Newborn
The waiting was breath held underwater, the longing was a crushing ocean wave, and the scalpel cut was the sharpness of moonlight at the end of a stormy day. Now his smile carves deep into my ribcage, his fingers worm paths under my skin, and the smell of his head is fresh-baked bread that I […]
Geraniums
How did the flaming falsehoods start? You brought a pot of carmine petals as a ticket to her heart. You swooped with cardinal flowers to validate your fiction, but the firm line of her crimson lips confirmed her comprehension. Geraniums aren’t perjurious, they cannot hide their shame; only roses know the secret of the fabrication […]
You and Me
together in lamp’s twilight pool you and me cup of tea TV glows in the corner quiet and content Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads You and Me This week Marian tells us about her love of Alice Cooper, a recent concert and the song ‘You and Me’. She […]
Carved
An old track forges its way, draws seams through fields pierced and riddled with flint. Winding and following the contours of the valley, it hurdles the backbone of a hilly landscape, past a wind-carved rock of elephantine grey, a hollowed out echo of an ancient voice from long ago. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response […]
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 ~ […]
Prodigal Soul
Life had become a no-man’s land bristling with blackened stumps and fallen trunks, an ancient bog where once a forest grew – until the fog of despair doused the light that had burned strong and bright, destroyed by passion out of control. Shrouded peat was pocked with charcoal and twisted roots eroded toxic soil. Between […]
Ocean Graveyard
Out on the nightmare sea, pitched and tossed by waves and misrepresented mermaid’s octaves ships approach the graveyard of negligence, the locker of Davy Jones, with its stash of pearls and gnarled bones nullified, picked clean and white by Neptune’s unleashed parasites. While gulls plane a sea breeze on stiffly out-stretched wings, you can’t move […]
writing in north norfolk 