Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

It was just before midnight
when I left the hotel-room to go for a stroll -
was found an hour later thrashing my arms
in a polluted canal.

My husband shredded our argument on the hotel's
double-bed, lit cigarette after cigarette -
a September night, I wore a summer skirt -
How long is an hour? She wanted fresh air.

Had a car stopped at the kerb
and a man offered me a lift,
I would have told myself it was the same
in all cities and declined.

But they were kids.
The youngest thirteen.
Approaching from behind.
Noting my tourist accent, they mentioned a party.

When the knife was at my throat
my mind became a plank of wood.
They pinned back my arms,
frogmarched me onto a tow-path,

ripped off my skirt - their fingers still children's,
but in their frenzy only shadows;
high on cocaine, they exorcised
the leather-belt used on them.

In the witness-box, one of their mothers,
grateful for her larger council-flat,
praises church and Bible-study
and her two sons born on Indonesian soil,

somersaulting off the back of a van
landing with cocky grins among indigenous
boys who sneered at their out-of-fashion
clothes.

I look at this mother and remember the word
bitch criss-crossing my skin,
flattening it into powder,
into ash flicked from a cigarette -

the cold water stinking as hell
claiming me for its own miracle.
I survived.
Walked out on my husband

understanding so well but now it's over, darling.
Sitting high-heeled, I listen to the prosecution
and imagine a ship at sea;
sway with its rhythm

until I believe the ship rocks in my hand.
At the mention of "truth",
the coastline gives way to tumbling graves
where one slow evening

the dipping sun melted a stained-glass saint
and only gnats disturbed my bare arms.