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

Marshmallow Eve
the unboy
one boy
spots the girl
with perfumed pits
and aerated hair
at less than under
one footspace
fresh from toast crumbs
and Can’t Believe It’s Not
Saturday
spread straight
from the weekend
and hair tousled into
towelling fluffed once perfect bob
bobbed in quick,
condensation early morning windowed
bathtime
with no time
for suds or soak
bubbles
or a roam a therapy
oil from Steve
3 months late for the birthday
she wanted
but the bloke she forgot
and forgets further
deeply down in
and with
each ceramic snifter
when the time permits her forget full
un-less he should ever appear again
with literal roses
held over his metaphorical
heart.
Marshamllow spots, lines and circles
breathingher into, in, on and around
the space reserved with the sign
that reads: ‘Wait’ here for attention
leaving     the     ‘Queue     Other
End’    for the rest

and takes her, tastes her, tells her she’s
                                                          there
even though she’s hard to recognise
where here or there are
or where they differ from someplace
the non place where
the mourning’s left her
lounging like the lizard under
two too much lamp’s glaring
and sharing
her warmth that she thought
had stayed left
on the right of her bed
where Marshmallow would breathe
and take it with him
everywhere.
Then she’s in
where he thought he was
touching without touching
nearer but not close
taking the space unreserved by him
preferring to reserve only hers
and she looks
and sees
and has his
everything
that he’s saved for the now
that he thought
he’d had.
Smiles.
She smiles the smile that outsmiles all others
with the teeth, the lips, the gloss
from magazines a plenty
left by the bed
when it was cold with nothing to
snuggle
nothing
to snuffle
all the words away from 8 till twelve
before she understood
that darkness needn’t
be full scary
with plaited covers and twisted
dreams a go going under matted
thoughts of growing ups
When I’m Older I
Want To Be’s
and empty daypapering ideas
notions
thoughts
left rootless
boundless
with their unseen energy.
And Marshmallow Eve and the girl
with the bumps in her grin
take the time
and never give it back.
Marshmallow and Ever
Eve and Jack
surnames mixed by mummys and daddys
who nEver thought their bay bee
would Ever nEver do what she did
in the time before the bob
or the Steve
but after the Barbiesque attempts
at pinkness with the frills added
as trifle.
And Marshmallow and Ever borrow
blend everything with theirs
forgotten and rubbed out
wiped out smeared out
with one foot down (RIGHT)
out the carpark where no trees
have ever seen the light
of yellow fluorescence on
whispered squared glass that fails to tinkle
with muffler’s brace
and off on Kerouac’s road
somewhere else
holding dreams out the glassless
windowless
windows Thelmalouise
around the town
with no cliff
no chases
just a beach.