Her mother told her she was born to dance. She said, in the womb her heart tattooed her future steps on a kind of fever chart, a balletic horoscope of her every move. The first time she heard the blues, she slipped on her shoes, pointed her toes and pirouetted out the door, jazzed and […]
Category: Poems
Mapping Memories
I start to trace the map of her face, the contours of her cheeks, pools of blue eyes, her valleys and her peaks, drawing from distant memories, trying to forget more recent days, colouring the sunshine hours, and feeling her warmth. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Tuesday Poetics: Musical Muse […]
Stranded
After the hurly burly of a storm on uninhabited isles – green jewels in crystal foam – a custard wind blows under the rim of a bluff clad with cushions of turf and crowned with rock shaped like a whale. This is where stranded mermaids watch clouds sail and forests splash and crash their splendid […]
Shakespeare Dreaming
Words fall on fertile ground, blossoming midsummer dreams or sprouting mares of thorn and bane. While the poet’s pendulum swings, chimera of the mind whips whirring wings of fantasy into comedy, romance and tragedy, borne on feathered quill to make of what you will. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille […]
Higgledy-piggledy
In the labyrinthine malformed lanes and backstreets of imagination, dead-reckoning never takes me north, south, east or west, but always looks left, to the sinister side of my brain. Blindfolded by the torn curtain of fantasy, I press on in my wanderings, and my gait cannot help but feign a gritty, natural inclination to embed […]
Words out of Leaves out of Words
A perfect russet leaf for her to press between the leaves of sonnets, caught on her sweater, tucked into her pocket, gave her the words she wrote on her note pad of new po- ems . Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Weekend Mini-Challenge: Out of Your Own Words […]
Sea Holly
Before this coast was swamped by sea and dinosaurs vanished, was I simply holly? I remember heat and thorns as big as ceraptosian dinosaurs’ horns and plants higher than the windmill on the salt marsh edge that was once a hill. Skies were always endless, as were the silent-black nights, which twinkled with a million […]
Alone
On the rim of sunset, evening hues are darkening, musky with the fading scent of undergrowth. Summer will soon be a forgotten dream, her insects a distant echo. But at the heart of feelings of rejection and loneliness is the beat of all things. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to Thursday photo prompt – […]
Day Tripping
Wind-buffeted, we listen for quiet waves below the pier. Filtered through a bank of low-lying granite cloud, August sun is determined to shine on Southwold. Day trippers brave the sea, build castles on the beach, while in brightly coloured huts, flustered mothers hand out soggy egg and cress sandwiches that crunch with sand. In the […]
Tree Magic
Along banks and edges of paths and fields, trees watch; their branches lances sharp enough to pierce, their leaves shields. What we think are hollow trunks, devoid of sap and bark, that rise from ponds still as looking glass, are ragged shadows of wet birch and ash, wizard wands that trick us into thinking reeds […]
writing in north norfolk 