Eaten up by a voracious ambedo, dazzled by a blackberry-shaped cloud, I crumbled in the tide of a summer lido, where eminent locals misbehaved. Taking care not to be noticed in my one-piece swimming suit, I switched from breast-stroke to paddle, shook chlorine off my wings and took flight. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Image found […]
Category: Poems
A poem to sum up my feelings in this post.
A Single Mother’s Work
Always the first one to arrive, drop her child off, say goodbye and run to catch the bus, but we got by. Messages with a certain tone, the school has just been on the phone, you forgot her lunch, you weren’t the only one. A struggle to get back on time, bags of shopping snag […]
Sunday Morning Inspiration
I get up early while you’re still asleep; avoiding the cats, I creep down the stairs, try not to wake you with my leaden feet, stumble over work boots and into chairs. The bathroom floor’s cold, and the toilet seat, the sink is laced with toothpaste and stray hairs. The cat litter smells and they […]
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. […]
A Walk on the Cutting Edge
I pull bracken fronds through fingers on the edge of a freshly shaven playing field, where cut grass lingers a tinny ping disturbs the aromatic stillness you reach into a pocket for your phone sand martins wheel, chiffchaffs dart through twigs, the woods whisper check the screen, smile and take a selfie tap the keys […]
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 […]
What if…
I play chicken with Jupiter I might end up suspended in the teeth of a howling gale anchored legs straight arms stretched leaning into cosmic wind dodging lightning flashes among ammonia clouds my hands clamped over my ears at each rumble of thunder we might even play hoopla with Jupiter’s gossamer ring Kim M. Russell, […]
Invisible
We are invisible, held together by dark matter. We speckle emptiness, galaxies strung like diamonds on taffy pulled by space and time in an expanding universe, sculpted and dented by gravity into a map of invisibility. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Image found on Pinterest My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads – Invisible Today […]
Bridge of Lies
He thought she was a sucker, a con man’s dream, taken in by promises of Italian ice cream, a bottle of prosecco and a gondola ride under the Rialto and the Bridge of Sighs. But she had built her own bridge of lies; an experienced hustler with a scam of her own, she took all […]
In the canteen…
the women from the shop floor compare notes – the new fore- man’s cute. They speculate whether he’s available and watch together as he approaches the counter. The girl behind the steaming urn eyes him up as he waits his turn, smiles and flutters lashes like spiders’ legs, gives him an extra helping of scrambled […]
writing in north norfolk 