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

Two women are sitting at a table in a coffee bar.
It’s one of those small round tables
that allows the knees to touch below
and foreheads to touch above,

inviting the sitting couples to form themselves
into little human Christmas trees, if viewed from the side.
I’m viewing these two from the side
but the type of tree they form is more an English oak,

their heads and arms thrown back in the air,
gnarled frowns on their faces.
They are talking about another woman.
I learn that this other woman is the worst, is the pits.

She’s someone who’s full of falseness, they say -
an unnatural blonde, breast implants, a painted smile.
And yet this falseness has gained her everything -
the promotion that had been sitting like a parked car

for the brown doe-eyed one; the other’s lover.
I’m on one of those high stools at the window counter.
There’s holly wedged along the window ledge,
the berries are shrinking into themselves.

The two women are now telling each other
the things they’d like to do to this bitch
who’s been so fortunate,
who’s gathered all their luck to herself.

They hope that her new job envelopes her,
that it keeps her out late, cools the lover’s bed.
One is holding her rolled-up serviette
as if it were the handle of a pneumatic drill.

She wants to break the stone heart of this woman.
They hope that the sky falls on her,
that the ground rises up and swallows her,
that the four corners of the world

send their winds to destroy her.
They have reached that point where they relish
the fates they have imagined for her,
they are caught in the euphoric craze of their creativity,

they are rewriting Dante as they sit,
their hunger shines out with a vicious beauty,
their hand movements are a poetry of pain.
As I watch, their words fall away from them like leaves

still smoking at the edges, burned copper and dark brown
by their fervour, their limbs and faces are twisted and bare,
their hate strewn amongst their Christmas packages,
tight little acorns rolling giddily across the floor.