How much longer will my dark winter linger? Like trees, I drip With persistent grey. I mist rough, nugget soil, pouring ghostly oil from one leaden cloud to the next. The icy grip begins to slip when a red breast flames in an open window frame. Kim M. Russell, 2017 First image is one of […]
Category: Poems
Lost Soul
I am a wavering moth, a dusty Hebrew character, inky like my name. I am lost in the night, fluttering and in flames but drawn towards the light. Feeding on fluff and shadows, I sleep among the living and wake up with the dead, when beating hearts are unforgiving to souls that have been bled. […]
Dark Valentine
On this chilly St Valentine’s morn, Do not give me a rose without a thorn Or even preservèd cherries bittersweet Covered in sugar and chocolate. Do not write a pretty verse inside a card, Not one from Barrett-Browning nor the bard, Or take me to a restaurant for dinner When you know I ‘m trying […]
Witnesses to a Drowning
Halyards scream with wind at waves scribbling on flat canvas of beach and fishwife screech of black-headed gulls fills hissing sails. Egrets erupt from the creek, white against dun marsh, shoved along by the gale, whirling, flickering snowflakes in a frozen sky, peering curiously at the floating face in a blizzard of white lace. Kim […]
Ghosting
Gnats perform a ghostly slow gavotte, gathering like clouds in shafts of light, weaving, willowing wisps of curling smoke, drifting upwards and into the night: gathering, merging and dissipating, solemnly they join the twilight dance, fickle vampires flirting, mating, malign miasma of the Renaissance. Kim M. Russell, 2017 A swarm of gnats. Photograph: Martin Siepmann/Alamy […]
Screaming in Spring
At crack of sparrow bone,the dawn chorus begins. I moanwhen winged visitors make city spirits soar:birds madly squabbling for a morselfallenfrom the feeder is less a roarand more a scream.Diligent blackbirds turn over voluminous deadleaves by the shedand a robin settles on the narrowchain fence, all atrembleat the zenosyne advance of spring overmorrow. Kim M. Russell, […]
Birds of a Feather
Bellowing blarney in bare twigs, the oncoming storm is accompanied by gravel-rasp of crows and reverberating raven echoes. High above the ridge, the first appears, joined by a second artist of the air, wingtip to wingtip, rolling and diving, tearing apart the leaden shroud of cloud in a monsoon of rain and feathers: birds battling […]
No Remorse
The master crept into the chamber of his hangdog handmaiden’s shame again and again. There was no remorse. The bruises on body and soul got worse, while his penitent wife battled nightmares in their marital bed, plagued by guilty demons shrouded in shadows of sleep, which was never deep – just a wallowing in the […]
Dayspring
I stride along a frostbound road, eager to watch the dawn unfold these creased and crumpled fields; hasten due east, towards the tight crack of the horizon squeezing out a gorgeous blood red sun, a genesis – a birth at the very edge of earth. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Photograph by David Russell My […]
Through the Keyhole
I catch a kudoclasmic glimpse Through the keyhole of life, Like naked bodies in a window, Seen out of the corner of the eye From the top deck of a bus, Or a timid sparrow in a shaft of light. I somaticize aberrant emotions, Electrified with pain. An aching wisdom tooth, A tightened deadbolt, I […]
writing in north norfolk 