The past became a foreign place; love was more abundant there, with tangled beads, cheesecloth and lace, and everyone had longer hair. His was auburn and thick, and she longed to run her fingers through it. She watched and waited every day for him to pass her way when they were younger – she remembered […]
Category: Poems
Reined by Strings
Kim M. Russell, 10th April 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Poems in April Day 10: Open a Book For the tenth challenge of this NaPoWriMo, Anmol with like us to pick up any books lying closest to us or pick them from our bookshelves: poetry collections, novels, dictionaries, telephone directories… we […]
Only a Dream
She longs for clandestine meetings in the middle of the night; moonlit, shadow-filled secret trysts are always fleeting. She’s left crying for more substance and feeling dissatisfied with the hoots and screams of owls, the cobweb caresses of the ghosts in the corner arousing only small emotions – compared to the great love of which […]
Dummy
You’re not on stage with your rictus grin or safe in your box and the darkness within, and no familiar hand is shoved into your head. With an audience like this you’re better off dead – but you’re not even alive, you dummy, and today’s woodwork class doesn’t think you’re funny. With their chisels, hammers […]
Etiquette
A pretty word is etiquette, similar to pirouette, yet it rhymes with petty mundane things like vinaigrette, eau de toilette, kitchenette, flannelette or washing at the launderette, leatherette or stockinette, or even string-pulled marionettes. I prefer the dark romance of a planchette or a silhouette. I’d rather be a suffragette. Kim M. Russell, 7th April […]
Spirit in my Sanctum
I wasn’t told about a sitting tenant, didn’t ask for a housemate, certainly not an old creeper, a slipper shuffler, who leaves the seat up, the tap running and ghostly messages on the steamed-up bathroom mirror. I wouldn’t mind so much if he’d just leave me some of the bedclothes and stop levitating me when […]
Ghost in the Night
It’s a ghost in the night, keeping me awake with its whispering, muttering and sighing, and nudges in my poetic ribs. It pokes me with imagery and ties me up in allegory until I reach for notebook and pen (which I left on the armchair). Empty-handed (in inky midnight darkness) I creep gingerly downstairs. It’s […]
Cheese on Toast
I remember when we used to walk hand in hand along a sandy road that led to North Sea dunes, so deep into the night the lights had gone out in all the houses; we were guided by a sky full of stars and every time the moon disappeared, a nosy neighbour behind a curtain […]
River Cascading
Between deep gorges water flows: springs that glint over moss and lichen or energetic streams that tumble, shifting and grinding over rocks and boulders. Between deep gorges water flows, fizzing with minerals and petrichor, full to the brim with April showers, springs that glint over moss and lichen. In summer months, watercourses dry where water […]
I’m your little snow globe
Inside the roundness of my orb is a beach hut the colour of the sea, not grey as you’d expect on a wintry day but an optimistic shade of jade. There’s snow on its roof and sand at its base, a perfect place to write or watch the stars come out at night. I sit […]
writing in north norfolk 