To flood, with vowelling embrace, a page agape at my pen’s impudence, is to leave wounds of words upon its face, carved with the sharp and flat of consonants. Blood is ink dried in thirsty lines and margins, annotated stanzas, editor’s cut and thrust. All the while my stack of notebooks burgeons, shrouded in poetry […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
This fine city…
fits like a comfortable pair of shoes. I wander meandering alleys of what was once England’s second largest city, flanked by half-timbered shops and houses, from Tombland to the market place. I totter sea-sick among neat rows of sweet-wrapper stalls, up ancient steps to the bookends of castle and cathedral; along the river, where boats […]
Nothing at all
with a fastening of lips drawn and pressed in a tight line at superhuman speed she pulls her finger across the elongated hyphen the simulated silent zip she has none left to argue with no pizzazz, pep or vim she has nothing at all Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to ttps://dversepoets.com/2018/04/09/quadrille-52-zip-it/ De is our […]
Red Shoes
Heels tapped on the pavement, cracked red patent flashed ’Stop!’ but she could only go despite the pinch on her little toe and the blisters rubbed raw by red shoe leather, lucky pumps borrowed from her sister. No shoes of her own, no trainers, boots or sandals to her name; everything sold to fund her […]
Widdershins around the willow…
past a clump of daffodils, wild and self-willed, tangled in the tall grass where the bindweed grows. In corkscrew branches, a sunlit wood pigeon mutters a throaty warning for pilgrims to this place of Salix magic where Nature is budding green curtains of respectability to replace her tattered rags of dignity. Kim M. Russell, 3rd […]
Faith
It has taken over four years to regain faith in myself. Just before I retired from high school teaching, I was sick, exhausted, and unsure if I was doing the right thing. The plan was to finish a novel I started years ago before the pressures of teaching took over, so I enrolled on several […]
A South London Childhood
Balconies and concrete stairs, beery piss in broken lifts, every night the same old prayers, someone get us out of here. Tightrope walking on the fence, leap the gap between the sheds, long walk to the traffic lights, sideswiped by a motorbike. Buttercups and dandelions crowd long grass by rusty gates; in the alley, shadows […]
A Bunch of Sunshine
You can keep your bouquets of pungent lilies and blushing roses, cultivated beauty intertwined. What I would like is delicate frills, the brilliance of daffodils: a natural bunch of sunshine. Their trumpets trill the breath of spring, their breeze-swept petals fluttering, their yellow flowers are a welcome sign of the end of wintry blasts, warmer […]
Cracked Shell
On the paved path under the glossy bay tree, newly fallen from a nest, the jagged crack of half a freckled sky blue eggshell tears a hole in the day like a spring morning chorus of anxious mother birds, beaks open in raucous warning. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My poem for the dVerse Poets Pub […]
Newborn
The waiting was breath held underwater, the longing was a crushing ocean wave, and the scalpel cut was the sharpness of moonlight at the end of a stormy day. Now his smile carves deep into my ribcage, his fingers worm paths under my skin, and the smell of his head is fresh-baked bread that I […]
writing in north norfolk 