The world was disappointing, dry and thirsty, full of sadness, longing for some artistic creativity, when the slate sky flickered with metallic electricity. Thunder rumbled. The brawling river, rushing with rain-swollen flow, swung into a roaring curve below towards a thundering waterfall, rearing in glassy surges, snagging on the riverbed, like King Lear on the heath: […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
Parole
What has been imprisoned under the lawn all winter? Frozen mud, rendered malleable by spring warmth, releases rusty skeletons of ginger bud cases, last spring’s copper fairy lights. Stones and flint jingle underfoot, sigh a heavy scent from crumbly lumps of black earth, exuding worms from clumps, evicting glossy beetles from ivy tangled in the […]
A Taste for Arsenic
I resist the urge to touch my tongue to the toxic crystals, leaden grey, stir the poison in, although not so long for it to eat the spoon away. Not a year have I been his wedded wife and already his voice has a steely edge like the sharpened blade of the butcher’s knife in […]
Playground by the Village Hall
On Mondays, the village hall is closed: no community cinema, yoga or bingo. Even the clock has slowed almost to a stop. I crunch across the gravel, past the football pitch, dodge clumps of daisies and jump a little ditch. No dogs allowed inside the playground with its drooping swings, not-so-merry-go-round, empty slide and ropes […]
Postcard to My Younger Self
Wish you were here where I am now, no longer craving days without a row, happy family games and fun with Mr, Mrs and the children Bun. No more nightmares in council flats, where we couldn’t have dogs or cats; no more wishing for trips away to break the boredom of school holidays; no more […]
Another Postcard from Klimt
he wrote not in words sea-sick on a page but painted with damp brush on warm canvas sent a postcard portrait from the poplars in his garden and the shores of the lake Kim M. Russell, 2017 Postcard of Gustav Klimt Im Garten seines Ateliers by Moritz Nähr 1910, produced by EDITION SKYE Wien My […]
River Sounds
The river gleams dully between trees and gate, tossing tethered boats, setting ropes a-jingle as they wait to be released among hissing reeds and creaking willows. A whistling whirr of wings underscores a skein of honking geese unravelling across high clouds, broken by the raucous cry of a black-headed gull, a permanent marker in a […]
