I’m delighted to tell you that three of my poems have been published online today in Issue 7 of Littoral Magazine.
The poems are Life Without, Perspectives and Shaman. My thanks to Mervyn Linford for taking these poems.
The magazine can be found at
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/65871859/issue-7-littoral-magazine-autumn-equinox-issue
for Gita, wherever you are
Enchantment beckoned at the end of your garden
many climbing roses intertwined into a
a concealing bower where
we spied on hidden lovers
hunted magic deer that leapt
skywards and away from
our orbital arrows that encircled the world
we swapped shoes and dresses
each handmade by our mothers
each smelling so different
you said all my people smelled of milk
I thought all yours were spice scented
and beautiful
we kissed each others palms
held our breath as pirate raiders crept by
evaded an amorous Sultan
sucked the tart sweetness of pomegranates
taken from your mothers kitchen
we found brambles amid the blooms
you did not know blackberries at all
then loved them more than pomegranate
because they grew in our magic place
you mother thought they were dirty
like me
we thought this would go on forever
that we would grow up together
then, you were suddenly gone
moved away to where
a school would accept an Ugandan Asian girl
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
We stumble along, believing we hold the map
Believing we guide our path or someone does somewhere
From the darkness to the light and back
The bird flies through the drinking hall and is gone
Leaving memories, echoes and silence
All we are is memories and echoes
All we can do is try to fracture the silence.
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Soft bright colour on your roof
pegged to dry in ocean breeze
flying high on the blue
The mountain bursts, vomits fire and ash
ash that drifts, soft as snow
There, on your washing
an eyelash width of coal
another and another
speckles and chars
You are running to the boats
not stopping to breathe
Later, panic over, you return to
bring in your cloths of bright colour
see little mouths burnt through
black lipped, gasping
The mountain glows with lava
makes a second dawn each night
You wrap your damaged goods around you
sleep by the door
heaped in fear
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Sharing with earthweal’s Open Link Weekend.
I’m delighted to tell you that the first ever issue of Sciencefictionery Magazine is published today, and my poem ‘Falling’ is part of this great issue. My poem tells a story about troubles on a voyage to Mars.
Crevasses hide slidden trees
while cliff tops have shed huge rocks
now littered out below
like unstrung Brobdingnagian beads
On this miss-sized jewellers of a beach
glittering with quartz and pearled fossils
we scamper over curled dark pools
fish for a sense of perspective
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I’m so tall, I’m so tall
Yet you raised me to be so small
As waves wash an uncaring shore
So I would wash you with my love
As they caress rocks and pebbles
I used to kiss your uncaring cheek
Waited with the patience of waves
For you to regard me
To see the woman I had become
As someone you could be proud of
That tide went out years ago
I now walk a different shore
I’m so tall, I’m so tall
Yet you raised me to be so small
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Misquote in italics from Living on the Ceiling by Neil Arthur and Stephen Alfred Luscombe
Only Exmoor stretches out to embrace the whole sky in its immensity
Reflects its moods and colours, its nurture and destruction
Only the moor is as fickle as the sky
Today the moor is swallowed as clouds subsume the uplands
Yesterday it shed water like the clouds themselves
Tomorrow it will shimmer with heat, dry and unforgiving
Trees hide in hollows, afraid to stand in the open
Sheep bones litter the spring hillsides
Peaty silty bogs nestle with gorse , bracken and heather
Only Exmoor reaches out to bleed the very rain from the sky
To lie seeming gentle with its folds and billows, green fields abutting the heather
Then to gladly accept the gifts of deadly snow, killing floods, baking heat
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem first appeared in Peacock Journal 2017
My poem Night Driving is now up at Two Rivers Press online gallery RiversSide, where they feature works about Reading or by creators who live in Reading.
The press was founded in 1994 and publishes a variety of books including some excellent poetry books.
I understand that other ‘Readings’ may exist in former British colonies, but Two Rivers Press is based in Reading, Berkshire, England, the one and only original…… ;)
two figures and a blanket
tall dry grasses whispering
as light fades in the west
and shadows fold around them
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
