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

Eaval. Dearg. Blue mountain, red mountain. Eaval comes down to sea-level in a curve like Lorelei's top lip. A hundred peaks pinned to the land - weird wild brooches. How many beds? A fine fish supper: haddock flaking off like cirrus. A dry haddock in musty batter. Bonavista Guest House. The Fisherman's Mission. A wee ferry on a biro. Paint blistering. Painted salted. Salt paint painted over. Sky like a hot plate. How many seas? The harbour, boiling up in the engines, black boiling liquorice. The sea shrugging its itchy skins. A sea with soft hiccups. A sea swinging up above the ferry's windows. How many not enough pints, the tiger's eye, gave you the mythic wildness on an empty belly. He brings you South: he'll ring

waiting in cafés; music so loud you'd never hear the phone. Not that he rings. Battery failing; a man surrounding himself in seafog. Words, thin, greasy, flip up on the streets of the city. How many soundtracks? Oh mercy I cried city

How many hung washes, my clothes pegged to how many skies? Many times the petrol cap a black clover on the roof? Your man in the wrinkly tin, filling the tank with gurgling breath and trying to steer the conversation onto udders. Lost how many credit cards? Replacements to how many addresses? How many recipes useless away from a fishing town? Myths: halibut, giant cod. Realities. His arm round you in the station, eyeing a couple, kissing. They're doing it to make me jealous well didn't I drive till the wet road held more light than the sky, didn't I drive like Hansel and Gretel dropped a trail of cats' eyes?