Traditional tales are steeped in bloody red: apples, shoes and roses are less than innocent and Riding Hood performed a striptease for the wolf. She removed her clothes and was eaten by the wolf (for all we know her underwear was also red), believing her hairy grandma must be innocent. When I first heard this […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
The Blue Mountain
was a cold flame on the horizon; it cast a wide-reaching shadow, an other-worldly drift of snow where three royal daughters were trapped by many-headed trolls who loved to have their scalps scratched. Tempted by a generous reward, a soldier arrived with a well-honed sword to make the trolls’ ugly heads roll. The teenage princesses, […]
She is bold
and she is gold a yellow globe of chrysanthemum joyful and optimistic unfurling in the sun in her heart the warmth of summer rustling gently in the breeze among burnished falling leaves ready to mourn on the old year’s tomb. Kim M. Russell, 7th October 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Tuesday Poetics: What’s […]
Locked
Padlocked by passion, she worshipped no more relics, gathered no hair, brewed no potions, no more rituals or spells, no wax figures, no toads stuck with thorns – just a love lock carved with initials, a symbol of fidelity and, thrown into the depths of the river, the key: heavy metal to weigh down hopeless […]
Scrimshaw
is the sound of wave washing whale spurt of spout from blowhole mournful moan of humpback’s tune whaler’s ahoy and thud of harpoon a deconstructed tooth or bone hacked and sawn, cut and honed when a lull of inactivity gave rise to creativity a reminder of giants of the sea human beings’ waste and cruelty […]
Washing Day
I can still smell soap bubbles in the scullery, steamy clean and floating through my early years; my grandmother’s hands red and hot, tea-towels boiling in the biggest pot as I turned the handle of the wringer, reminded always to ‘Mind your finger!’ I remember sitting on the back step while she raised the line […]
Poets Curve
We are curving, avoiding life’s black holes, skipping star-encrusted puddles, bending light through space and time, taming swirls of cosmic inky rhyme, producing poetry of gravity, predicting relativity. Kim M. Russell, 30th September 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Physics with Björn: Gravity and space-time curvature Björn is back to inspire us […]
Netsuke
Snug in the palm of my hand, fingers curled and caressing its smoothness, exploring miniature scales on back and fanned tail, tiny teeth in roar of mouth, the dust-filled creases of its head, flaming copper burnished with the faint scent of boxwood, my little finger fits the curve of its body, feels the kanji carved […]
The Elusiveness of Purple
It’s in the bloom on the skin of a plump plum poised to plop, the fruity sweetness of the drop of a blackberry’s inky stain, the smear of jam on a child’s face, and the smudge in the space between the rich red of sunset and the indigo of night. When the scent of plum […]
You can keep your clowns…
those unfunny comics with their distorted faces and noisy antics, brightly-coloured anarchists. No more animals in the ring! Uncage the wild and suffering bears and lions, the chimpanzees at infinite human tea parties. Give me the sparkles of lights in the darkness, knife-throw and fire-eatery, magic and mystery, sequins and grace, balance and flight of […]
writing in north norfolk 