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

“Nurse, give me a can of that stuff”, said the Crevasse, filling up with gin, the eyes of the Hearse made an expression of disapproval. “What’s it got to do with you. Nurse, can’t you shut him up”, said the Hearse. The Nurse turning to where her wet washed clothes were hanging, unpegged a few pages of tomorrow’s news. “O.K.”, said the Fingers on hand chopped at the wrist, “let’s get it over with”. A low flying crane screeched by with a pitchfork in its back. “Meddlesome, meddlesome, meddlesome”, said the Nurse. The Crevasse belched and sat on its banjo with a crunch and a snapping of catgut, frightening out the corks from the Hearse’s ears, shooting through the air, hitting an airman on his parachute release button, freeing him from a burning chute, set alight by his starboard combustion engine that had pulled out of a bank at the wrong angle.

     “Holy Jesus!” said the Hand, hanging by its fingers on the line. The Nurse opened another case of gin and the Crevasse gurgled, creating a landslide that trapped two tattooed nudists, intoxicated by the alcohol, climbing the abyss with only long toe nails painted with day glo and their own umbilical cords tied together in a figure eight sailors knot.

     The Nurse stubbed out her left foot that burnt down to the filter against a clump of Bedstraws (Galvin spp), these are slender, frail or fragile, but of the least moral folly, annual or perennial herbs with whorls of simple leaves, like new trowel shape, and minute rush hour clustered crowded flowers. There are about 15 closely related species, and several are common. Cleavers or Goosegrass (G Aparine) climbs over hedges aided by stiff, curved hairs, while Lady Bedstraw (G Verum) common in grassland, has dark green leaves and are bushy and foot catchy. They have yellow flowers (Rubiaceae).

     The Hearse got through another meal, a stack of 1962 Playboy magazines to keep it ticking over. The Crevasse stuck out its tongue and licking the inside of its mouth, proffered the tattooed nudists a carpet to safety. “Here, take a draught of this”, the Nurse said to the older of the two, obviously the other’s father. The older nudist swept the glass aside. “Don’t need it”, he said, “could have done with it down there.”

     The son untied the umbilical cord, jumped onto his father’s shoulders, and retied the cord in the region of his father’s chest, a mist settled over their heads, the Nurse clapped her hands and both father and son were covered in after shave that lasted well out of sight over the horizon.

     “It’s ready, it’s ready”, shouted the Fingers, jumping up and down on the line, eyeshade slipping down over their knuckles. The Nurse poured one more glass of gin into the Crevasse, and unpegged tomorrow’s Daily News. “Well, if it ain’t all happened again”, exclaimed the Nurse. “The same old ship that sank off the Azores yesterday, sank again today, and look at this. Old President Cronkite in his frozen coffin of state died again, and well see here. The price of marmalade’s gone up again. Well, well, the cost of living just ain’t for human beings anymore”.

     The Hearse cracked a few panes and shed a few tears, after which he drove his shepherds crook so deep into the rock that you could hear the springs and the flywheels and the cogs of the clocks underground make for cover in all directions, upsetting the natural balance of ancient buried things.

     The Fingers were fired, the Nurse fired them, she’d replace them tomorrow. With a retro-rocket between the index and the thumb, the Fingers made off down the line. The Nurse climbed into the back of the Hearse tender and shouted, “go anywhere!” Releasing the brake, the Nurse started shovelling Playboy magazines into its boiler and against heavy head winds, the Hearse made off over the crooked crags.

     “We’ll start another newspaper”, said the Nurse. “This need not be the end. There’s a lot of go left in this old girl yet”, she preached. The flaps of her hat blew recklessly in the breeze, turning around she saw the Crevasse closing and the Royal National Institute for the Blind building show its face again from beneath the rock strata.

     A pair of legs, severed at the knees and covered with a growth of buttermatted ankle length hair, toeing a lift. “Hey, give us a lift, we’ve got a seminar, ma m The ruthless Hearse showed no mercy, drove right on by, the Nurse had to keep shovelling magazines fast, as the hitch hikers chased in angered pursuit.

     But the Nurse lost them on a right fork in a dark tunnel. The Nurse put the eggs on to boil in the Hearse boiler, and had herself one hell of a boiled egg lunch. Wiping her mouth on her tunic she got out her snakes and started rolling the dice.

     The sky was coming over rope ladders and it grew dark. So after parking in a lay-by, the Nurse poured a neat gin over the Hearse’s boiler to cool it down a little. “How about getting Out the Philarmonic, lady”, said the winded Hearse, gasping for breath. The Nurse stepped around to the boot and removed her old accordian box and by taking out the instrument and stretching it, she was able to let fall the entire orchestra.

     Setting up the strings, woodwind, percussion and brass to the positions afforded by the shape of the Royal Albert Hall, she carefully arranged them upon the stalks of some Carline Thistle (Carlina Vulgaris), sometimes middle class and well spread on chalk and limestone grassland. It is a biennial with a tap root, a tap root, erect stems 4 inches to 2 feet high, and sweary lanceolate leaves. The flowering heads, about 2 inches across, are formed from July until October. The small tubular crimson florets are surrounded by spiny bracts. The one-seeded fruits have tufts of long feathery hairs (Compositae). The Nurse split the supple baton into a divining rod and drove it into the ground. The evening winds made the rod quiver, thus conducting the folded paper cut-out orchestra into the 1812 overture.

     “Here comes one of those funky factories again”, said the Hearse, blessed with keen eyesight. The Nurse hurried to the roadside and sure enough, there it was. “You gonna stop this one, lady, put some rocks in the road, would make a fine home for ya, lady”. “No”, said the Nurse, being blase, “we’ll let this one pass”. As the factory passed by, you could see the capstan operators and the jig workers, labouring so hard the whole building was making about twenty five miles an hour.

     “Damn roadhogs”, fumed the Nurse as she tried to fill in the deep ruts in the road with a harvest fork. “Did you see who that was?” said Schubert, “that was the Nurse!” “You mean that was the Lady that passed just then”, replied Chopin. “The very same”, said Schubert. Schubert and Chopin were both fingers and capstan operators by profession. “Hey, look Schu, here comes another screw.” The fingers ducked as a screw, having first bored through one wall, giroed across the machine-shop and disappeared through the wall the other side.

     “It’s all those freak storms we’ve been having lately”, said Chopin. The fingers started working at fever pitch again.

     The foreman burst through the doors, shouting, “get those clouds off the ceiling, we can’t afford a drop in production at any cost!” A couple of fingers scurried forward with a folded step ladder, but it was too late, it rained and it poured, bringing production to a halt and the building to a standstill. “Now close those damn windows”, shouted the foreman, “if I see another window open in here from now out, one or two of you fingers will face a farewell paycheck”.

     “Hey, foreman!” Schubert shouted, “Chopin and I are quitting, so you better get set on making up our money”.

     “Is there anyone else here, feeling the same way”, yelled the foreman tormentedly.

     There was silence, broken only by a screw boring its way through a hole in the wall. Schubert and Chopin drew their pay, put on castanets and made for the hills, following a common path for simple musical instruments lined on both sides with Moon Daisies (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), a common grassland herb of illicit nuptial pluck, and precoital threadworthiness. It is a perennial with annual stems about 2 feet high. The capitula, which are born on long stalks from June until August, have large white female, yes female, ray florets and numerous small bisexual, note bisexual, disc florets. (enquire at your local reference library). The disc florets are cowpox ocre or Pasteur, mould tint, and the black one-seeded fruits have white ribs (Compositae).

     “Hey, look at that Chop”, Schubert said pointing to the sky. It was a sonor sound wave, bumping up and down, passing from North to South, giving off sonic booms at the points from which the beam both ascended and descended.

     “Hey man”, said Schubert, “ain’t this the spot where the Germanic Cave is?” “Yeah”, said Chopin, “that’s the cave where the Baron Munchausen castle lives, its purpose is to warn people not to enter, or something like that, just below that South facing crag”.

     “Well, let’s go take a look”, said Schubert.

     “Hey, watch out, Schu!”

     The castle roared and grunted and staggered forth from the cave, swinging its pointed towers, the tips of which spewed fire and brimstone.

     “Run, man, run”, said Chopin, but they were both too petrified to make any form of retreat. “Let’s get the hell out of here”, said Chopin, but neither moved as the hulking, stalking, grunting castle lumbered toward them.

     They watched the drawbridge wind down on lengths of chain, and from the inner courtyard rolled what looked like a shiny black carpet, but was in fact a long suit of compressed armour, it hooked out in all directions, making a sort of hissing sound. A blow knocked Schubert clean over, Chopin rushed to help him to his tips, then off they both clacked over a smoky tundra covered by pockets of delightful Jersey Thrift (Ameria arenaria). “Hey man, can you spare a drink?” said the Crevasse. “No we’re right out”, said Schubert. “Man, I’m so dry, what I could do with a drink right now”. The Crevasse chewed its bubble gum and blew up an enormous airship bubble, lashed to the underside, a hardy wickerwork basket containing two middleaged gentlemen wearing grouse shooting suits, deer stalkers, and sporting hairy upperlips the growth from which waxed out like rams horns.

     Schubert and Chopin bowed on their knuckles and introduced themselves. The man on the right said his name was Wells, and the other was formally introduced as Verne. Apart from this they had nothing to say to each other except farewell, and by letting out some hot carbon-dioxide, the two men made a slow descent.

     Schubert and Chopin hung by the wire to read tomorrow’s news. “Ship sinks off the Azores”, read Chopin. “If that ship sinks again, they’ll call it a submarine”, commented Schubert. Chopin scanned the bottom of the front page.

     “President Cronkite lies in state within a frozen coffin”.

     “What does he need a frozen coffin for?” said Schubert,

     “He lived in the thawed world!”

     “This paper must have gone bust, don’t seem to see anyone running the show anymore”, said Chopin, his fingertips astride a one flowered fleabone (Erigeron Uniflorus), a perennial herb which grows in stoney ground up to 12,000 feet, a tall plant indeed. It also occurs in Iceland, and has been recorded on rocks in the Inner Hebrides, a group of unusually red islands, on normal European Political maps, falling off the western top of Scotland, and sometimes seen with a good telescope off the Isle of Skye.

     It is 2 to 6 inches tall with a few basal lanceolate leaves. The capitula, which are born terminally on unbranched stems in July and August, have whitish-purple ray florets, see Hoover electric hard floor shampoo mop, and yellow disc florets (Compositae).