we mutter and complain about missing the news again the stereo stops playing and we live off sandwiches for a while candles flicker inside stars twinkle outside silence is a palpable buzzing and crackling inside ears and heads so we feed it with words that might not otherwise have been said. Kim M. Russell, 2017 […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Impressions of Gressenhall
Red bricks echo with the homeless and poor, from the squeak of wrought-iron gate to the heavy fall of knocker on imposing door. They reverberate with hunger, fuelled by gruel and mouse-meagre morsel trails of bread-and-cheese through the corridors of their history. They are organised and counted by the workhouse clock, punctuated with oakum, elbow […]
My Dearest Book
I wrote you a love poem but I can’t remember how I found you: you were simply there, when the day before you were not. Your black and white circus of dreams was marvellously prefabricated and you easily enchanted me into your circular paths, drew me to your bonfire’s heat. Your acrobats and fortune-tellers thrilled, […]
Book of Words
My note book is a testament to bitten nails, ragged and rent, and heretic bleed of cuticles not neatly trimmed and beautiful but ripped, picked and gnawed while searching for the perfect word, the one that shines with serendipity, arriving as an epiphany and written down to be used in stories, poems and reviews. Kim […]
Magic
is the changing face of nature as summer slowly cedes to autumn: flocks of birds morph in a washed-out sky, kaleidoscopic shapes in preparation for arduous flights and winter migration; hedges drip with blood-red berries, green foliage metamorphoses into shades of amber, gold and rust, and that first leaf lands in grass and dust. Kim […]
Cold War Reheated
Red geraniums rust in September rain; sparrows splash dust in puddles forming on the path. Once again, men point their weapons at the sky in far-off places I have never been and will never go, reawakening fears that Cold Wars would become heated in memories of a child petrified by serious grey words that dripped from […]
Sea Dragon
No roar of fire or brimstone, no cloud of dust erupts from the fossilised mosaic of forefin, ribs and backbone. The extended tail’s a fake, implanted in the rocky tomb. She’s a mislabelled, 200 million-year-old surprise: an ancient monster that terrorised the primordial Somerset coast concealed the incomplete bones of a sea dragon embryo. Kim […]
Grandmother’s Shoes
She had a closet full of shoes she wouldn’t throw away, reminders of the comfy days when every shoe would fit. For me, it was a treasure trove of giant shoes for a four-year-old to slide across the lino, Ginger to my grandfather’s Astaire. I was completely unaware of the agony of her size three […]
Flood
Liquid gushes out of drains and fills up gutters. Is Zeus dozing in the bath again? I imagine him luxuriating, how infuriating: while rain bursts river banks and breaches dams, he rests his divine head. I wish he’d shower instead. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Fashion Me Your […]
Twilight Dreaming
Shared memories fill quiet moments like the stuffing in the sagging sofa where we sit with cats on laps, content. Outside, the willow fills the garden with shadows, which the sun fragments and enamels copper and golden. The drapes of night make their descent and memories turn to dreams; the more my mind’s eye sees […]
writing in north norfolk 