Pandemic masks express littleof the wearer’s personality: floral,funny, plain or heavy metal. We focus on each other’s pupilsor look away, unsure if sparklesare reflections of windowed souls. Words and meanings muffled,cloaked, and sometimes daggered waffleto fill the spaces in between, mumbled emotions captured in dissembledetiquette. And how we long for smiles,rows of teeth, and lips […]
Fringe
I used to hide behind fringes: the tablecloth fringe that dangledfrom grandmother’s dining table,the one I pulled until scaldingtea splashed on my legs; the grass and weeds on the fringeof the field near the railway bridge,the green-shadowed placewhere I buried my pet hamster; the fringe of hair over my eyes,my mother’s scissor-straight line,the blonde fringe […]
Terrapins and Sweet Corn
I met Caroline in our first year at an all-girls grammar school, and we spent as much time as we could together. She lived a bus ride away in a bungalow, the first one I’d ever come across, which her parents had expanded upwards into the roof, where Caroline had her bedroom. It was a […]
Quiet Tights and Masks
After a summer of bare legs in sunshine,I looked forward to a winter woollen-warm with tights, 120 denier thick,soft to touch and clinging to my skin. I ordered an array of face masks, stylish,colourful statements of my Covid fashion,but tights and masks remained unworn.I was required to stay indoors, invisible to all and sundry,in pyjamas […]
Next Door’s Ghosts Episode 7
Kay explained the situation and within minutes the man, who was becoming more and more attractive, with his calm manner and soothing voice, had opened his boot, produced a set of jump leads, and proceeded to rescue her like the proverbial knight. “You’re a life saver,” said Kay, when her engine purred and Ian had […]
No Swan Song
In my hollow bones, I feel this year will not be the final swan song. Though the waves come higher, and broken reeds are flung across uneven paths, our eyes are dazzled by birded fields and sun-flecked tides that yield the departure of winter. A verdant fern unfurls unseen beside a bubbling stream and something […]
Garrulous and Green
this morning serenadedbirdsong just a gush of liquid notesspilling a stream of consciousnessfilling cracked and solitary heartswhistling an untimely declarationof spring Kim M. Russell, 24th February 2021 My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #58: Two Into One Will Go Thank you for featuring Candy’s newly-invented form, Rosemary, which I think you know […]
The Oblivion of Snow
‘For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.’ Wallace Stevens It started with a silent flake, a branched crystal, not unlike a flower or a tree, or the paper doily cut-outs grandma used to make. It started with a snowflake, but […]
Fresh Flow
I have fresh longing to go for a walk by the river, where water flows like feathers, […]
Invisible Umbilical
The unborn sleep and waketo their mothers’ heartbeatswith flares of dawns and sunsets. Expectant with gentle curves,fields are still blotched with snow,while limp and drowsy meadows transform into the smoky greenof seeding grasses and flowers,patches of shifting light and colours bound together by an invisible umbilical,dewy cobwebs and the hum of early bees –there are […]
writing in north norfolk 