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 […]
Tag: Poetics
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 […]
Fay Watson and the Empty Chair
You want me to sit on what you think is an empty chair? Not while he sits there, his soft blond hair matted with blood, face grey as the smoke from the gun I pressed to his head. He’s not dead to me, he’s locked in my brain, a bloody stain I can’t scrub clean. […]
Gifts
In German, Gift means poison, something he may not know. He brings her gold, perfume and clothes, sometimes a diamond, sometimes a rose, until she doesn’t even see them piling up in lonely high security, the toxic perfection of their mansion. So she searches on the internet for something that she cannot get from him […]
Que Sera
I wanted to grow up like Doris Day just walking in the rain with Johnny Ray – whatever will be will be. My dad was the great pretender and, for me, there was only you, Mum, singing to Sinatra and Nat ‘King’ Cole, loving me as though there were no tomorrow. Granddad had the mellow […]
Washing Line Blues
Although it is a sunny day the rotary drier is sad today and drooping on her zimmer frame when she should be spinning in fresh zephyrs of spring. When she’s all pegged out with pillows, and fresh, clean towels that flap and billow, dancing trousers, shirts and sheets, with grass and daisies at her feet, the […]
View from a Roof
Each morning we sit here, a pair of old boots grumbling and preening grey feathers after a reveille of tweets and hoots has awakened us, whatever the weather. Anticipating a spring full of song, I rasp a throaty coo, try to sing along but in the corner of my beady eye I glimpse grey squirrels […]
Dark Valentine
On this chilly St Valentine’s morn, Do not give me a rose without a thorn Or even preservèd cherries bittersweet Covered in sugar and chocolate. Do not write a pretty verse inside a card, Not one from Barrett-Browning nor the bard, Or take me to a restaurant for dinner When you know I ‘m trying […]
Phoenix Trees
(to be read from the roots up) into a fresh spring breeze. pump pollen and on bare branches wriggle will catkins and new green leaves Soon roots and shoots. branches, slender resilient and stubborn spread storm, by a over bowled toppled, having trunks, Crumbling Kim M. Russell, 2017 Jennifer Vranes – “New Beginnings” My response […]
Waves like Arabian Stallions
(covering Patti Smith’s ‘Horses’) in a sea of possibilities I’m surrounded by waves like stallions horses coming from all directions noses flaming white manes shining stars in the black mare of night up against a sea wall I seize the first possibility in a crash of waves coming in like Arabian stallions lapping into sea […]
writing in north norfolk 