Catalogue of Illusions

She flicks through her central inner catalogue, the one engraved on her heart, and counts shattered illusions, the brevity of lovers, how quickly they depart. Ignoring her staccato cris de coeur, no empathy for a woman like her, those masterful money-makers – when it comes to the bedroom – have no finesse, their lovemaking’s nostrum. […]

Noisy Faucet

Throughout the night, while other folk were fast asleep, their noisy faucet mumbled cyan, vaunted a tragedy of paraffin, a gradual puddle, ready to flame into Koi no Yokan, a nod to the arsonists’ tradition, scantily clad in new lovers’ promises. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Wordle #187

The Haunted Inn

On a lonely fell is a coaching inn where the locals stare and sometimes grin, imbibing ale and swigging rum as unsuspecting grockles come. Those who choose to stay the night will wish they hadn’t, with hindsight. Wrapped in sweaty nightclothes’ trammel and listening for the keyhole’s rattle, the naïve and malleable ponder and sigh at […]

The Homeless Café

Some shine like celadon, confidence permeates every pore, while others, abashed and nervous, sag like vacant old sofas to the floor, salvaged by a café for the poor and homeless, a place to read and drink tea, chat over mugs of steaming coffee, clip articles from out-of-date magazines donated by local charities, debating the offal […]

Demons

In the shattering pangs of sadness, bring me nepenthe so I may climb into vague forgetfulness and abdicate world-weariness. Neolithic numbness turns me to sallow stone, my only hope has perished and left me all alone. The four corners of this earth grow ever near, closing in day by day, accompanied by uncontrollable, irrational, offhand […]