She saw through him, the last glass eel of summer, tinkling and shattering up the river with a shiver like a lost star in an alien galaxy, a long way from the Sargasso Sea. She felt sick as she let the slick predator slip through her fingers in whirlpools of emotion and he abandoned her […]
Tag: Open Link Night
Day Tripping
Wind-buffeted, we listen for quiet waves below the pier. Filtered through a bank of low-lying granite cloud, August sun is determined to shine on Southwold. Day trippers brave the sea, build castles on the beach, while in brightly coloured huts, flustered mothers hand out soggy egg and cress sandwiches that crunch with sand. In the […]
Starshine
The right to twinkle didn’t belong to Marilyn alone, but every star in the dark empyrean dome: the glints, star- dust and the supernovas; stars that dazzle until they fizzle out; and those that hang on to the past, hoping they will last for ever. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Today Gayle is hosting dVerse Poets […]
Summer Shades
Sky of robin egg blue splits; zigzags crack across its shell, spill sun, a yellow yolk, a glue uniting buttercup and gorse. Midas rays riffle ponds and pools, spark mayfly nymphs that break the surface like gilded bubbles in their ghostly mating rituals. Sunlight joins the dance, dives into chickweed, surfaces to gleam on slippery […]
Midsummer Verges
Content in our garden’s leafy shade, I think back to weedy margins on a distant council estate, full of dandelions and significance, between pan-hot pavement and simmering black tar, a strip of withered grass, litter-strewn and dotted with dog mess, where bike wheels used to spin, click, tick; children clutched coins in sweaty hands at […]
The Loss of Intimacy
She bustles in, weighed down with his clean underwear, pyjamas, barley water and boiled sweets, his reading glasses, now repaired, holding back wisps of her grey hair. She has to catch the bus at the same time every day and sit for hours, making repetitive small-talk with a man who doesn’t know her name, has forgotten, […]
Discovering the White Rabbit
After early showers on a capricious Saturday in May, lunchtime is bathed in balmy sunshine. The shady toll path bustles with strollers and joggers, all inhaling spring’s steamy promise, and echoes with a coxswain’s voice counting rowers’ strokes. On the opposite bank, a swan stretches; alert to danger, she watches over cygnets hidden in a […]
Sounds from Saturn
Noises from the eerie vacuum inside Saturn’s rings are sucked out, dying silently in the sad, black void. If we listen, we can hear pops and cracks in the near- total emptiness of space tinnitus, of charged particles and atoms, our audio postcards home. Kim M. Russell, 2017 (Picture: EPA) A quadrille for dVerse Poets […]
Dancing in the Centre of a Noun
(from Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Anne Hathaway’) Encircling all my words with his,he caressed them with a gentle touch,slipped them on as if they were ashoe, a glove, a familiar verbhe desired for his own; dancingtogether to a melody inquadruple time, echoing thebeat of hearts, we were the centreof the serious ceremony ofthe allemande: we were […]
Celtic Crow
One eye glances askance, glittering jet lustre. Is Morrighan watching? Will she visit you? Wings open like a broken umbrella, a sheen of funereal feathers. Is it alone or are there three to strike fear in the hearts of the enemy? Talons scratch a morbid beat to the castanet clacking of its beak. Sacred sister […]