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

There are wasps everywhere in the hallway. Then you see there’s a yellow-black seething mound of them over some half-rotted fruit that someone’s dropped. You were stung when you were a little kid and it hurt really bad. So you edge along the wall on the other side, remembering something your mother said about wasps being irritable In hot weather. One blips stupidly around the open door to the flat, but you dive through, hoping it hasn’t come in after you.

     You’re in family territory now, that poky fiat six floors up, amongst all the other families in this building. But you’d know you were in your own patch even if you were blindfolded, just by the smell. You’ve known it ever since you were little, that stuffy family smell, mixed with polish, stale food and disinfectant.

     Kat is there already, sprawled across an armchair, half-dressed, watching telly, painting her nails in sticky red as she stuffs in crisps, eating with her mouth open. She’s wearing red lipstick and looks like a vampire. Grandmother’s snoring In the chair right by the set, though Kat has it turned up loud. Kat waves her sticky-red-blood nails in the air, ignoring you, but you don’t mind as all she ever gives you is grief anyway.

     On the telly there’s some foreign programme with words you don’t understand, where everyone lives in a fancy house and drives around in a big car. You wonder if this is real life somewhere else.

     You go to the bedroom, shutting the door on the noise and pulling the curtain across your pert of the space you have to share with your parents. You put your bag down carefully, listening for Kat’s sneaky, slidy feet outside the door. A surprise appearance from Kat would be a nuisance right now, because in your bag you have something secret, something you’re not supposed to have. You half wonder if you really had the guts to take it, and you unzip the bag and reach inside to check. And, yes, amongst your books, you find the greasy bundle. With both hands, you lift it out and put it on your bed. It is bigger then you remembered. You unwrap it carefully and take the pistol into your slippery hands feeling it all over. The grey, silky metal of it seems cold, despite the heat. You stroke it, noticing the grip has worn smooth in places. The feel of death about it thrills you, and it scares the shit out of you at the same time. But the man says that sometimes we have to walk hand in glove with fear.

     You take a clip of ammunition and slide it in, just as you’ve seen the others do lots of times, it’s easy. The gun’s heavy with your arms at full stretch, but you manage to hold it steady. You aim it at the jacket hung on the back of the door.

     Squinting down the sight, you can see the faces of your teacher, your dad, your mum, Grandmother, Kat - they all have their mouths open like fish on the hook. You squeeze the trigger gently, knowing you can take it so far before the gun goes off. The half-cocked position. One of them told you that. In your mind though, you follow through, feeling the recoil, and see the bullet leaving the muzzle in slow motion. It slowly rips a hole through the door, and disappears into the plaster on the wall opposite spraying bits of wall everywhere as the world speeds up again, and your heart is beating really fast. You have forgotten to breathe and gulp in air. You feel dizzy. They told you bullets can go right through a person as though they were nothing. And sometimes they get so deeply embedded into a wall, you can’t find them.

     You watched them with their guns. One man showed you his gun, taking it to pieces in front of you. They always had guns, sometimes there were boxes full of them. Today there were boxes full of guns of all kinds, rifles, pistols, ammunition, and lots of other things. They hadn’t fastened down the lids, so when they were busy in another room, it was easy for you to take a pistol, and a few clips, and put them in your bag.

     If they knew you had a gun, the boys in school would look up to you. And the girls, they’d let you do anything if you told them. But you know you can’t tell them. Only you, and the man, must know. You have work to do, like the man tells you, so no one must know. And so you wrap it up carefully, leaving it loaded, and stuff it back into your bag.

     Your arms tingle and feel light without the gun. The oily cloth has left a stain on the bedcover. Your mother will be angry, but you don’t care - you no longer need to. Then you lie on the bed staring at the ceiling, following the maps of brown stains and cracks. The vibration of traffic outside buzzes the windows, and you hear the sounds of families all around. In the distance you hear the wail of sirens and the light on the wall makes wavy patterns. You know you’re going to see the man again, huge and dark against the hard blue sky. He touches the sun with his outstretched right hand, and it seems as though light comes from his fingertips. He opens and closes his mouth to let out words that you can’t hear. He seems to look at you, but it’s like a space movie when people talk through video screens, not really looking at one another. You try to speak, tell him that you’re listening, but you can’t. The sun gets brighter, and it’s hard to see the man, you reach out, but he fades against the glare so you can’t see his face anymore, he’s just a blur.

     Suddenly you’re being shaken, and you panic, thinking that the police are on to you. You can’t see through the bright sunlight but you realise It’s your mother bending over you. She’s saying something, but her words tangle In your head. She pulls you up until your nose is in her warm apron front and you smell her soap and the disinfectant she puts in the washing. You make out words like truant and lazy, and you know the teacher’s been talking to her, but you don’t really care anymore and you don’t say anything. She sounds angry, but her mouth is turned down at the corners like she’s going to cry.

     Then Grandmother starts up from the living room, she’s peed herself again. Your mother storms off, nearly tripping over your bag, shouting at Kat for not helping the old bitch to the toilet. Kat will just shrug it all off looking through Mum with those sullen black smudgy eyes.

     You hear the drone of a wasp somewhere in the house.

     No one says anything at the meal table, they’re all gawping at the telly. It blares out the news; a bomb has gone off at a police station in the centre. You sit with them around the table with stewed meat and bread: Grandmother, Mum, Dad, Kat. All of you are watching the rescue workers taking victims from plied rubble. You see the blood-soaked body of a young policewoman carried by two men. They lay it beside the ruined building. The camera cuts to the waiting families who blab and scream. Then Grandmother spills soup on her dress and your mum helps her clean it up; Dad looks on with his misery-face and Kat picks at her nails, her red mouth chewing, showing a piece of stringy meat through her sharp teeth. You just eat.

     But when your dad clears his throat you know you’re in for the lecture again - so you blank it out. You know it only too well: how he never had the chances that you had. How he works In a factory for a pittance to keep you, how only an education can save you ... You think of the man and your father seems to open and shut his mouth soundlessly, like a newsreader on television with the volume turned down. He points at the television screen and you hear him go on about what sort of world it is you’re growing up in. How they’ve struggled to bring you up decently. You turn down his sound.

     But then you hear a crash and turn to Grandmother. Her dead eyes are suddenly alive. She’s standing up and has knocked her plate onto the floor.

     Spitting bread she shouts, ‘Don’t you talk of struggles, you don’t know the meaning of struggle! What I had to do for you...all for your sake and all you do is watch television and talk!’

     She shakes as she speaks and quickly collapses back Into her chair, in the mess of food, whilst your mum cleans it up. You are surprised, but you know from listening in on your parents that there are things about Grandmother that are kept quiet. You’ve often wondered about her, wanted to ask her, but she doesn’t make much sense these days. But you know she despises your dad. Kat just looks on in disgust, pushing away her half-eaten food, leaving the table without asking. Your dad finishes his meal, opening his mouth now only for food. He eats like a dog.

     As soon as the meal is over, you leave the flat, getting out before your mother begins the nightly battle of getting grandmother ready for bed. You know Kat’ll get out too, she won’t help. And you feel just a tinge of sympathy for Kat having to share a room with the old woman. It doesn’t always smell nice in there and often she bangs around in the middle of the night, turning on lights and mumbling to herself.

     You bring the bag with you and walk out of the street door into the evening noises of children playing and the sounds of televisions and radios through open windows. It seems like babble all around. The sweet scent of some climbing wild flower you’ve never learned the name of filters through the smell of garbage. You wonder why the flower bothers and you think of the dead policewoman. You fancy that you can smell burning flesh on the hot breeze.

     The sun glides down over the ugly city, making it golden. The windows look like the buildings are full of sun. Your clothes cling to your sweat. Some little boys play at shooting with guns made from sticks, and you smile to yourself. You think you see Kat with a group of other teenage girls, in heavy make-up and tight skirts, heading towards the centre. They go to the bars that the soldiers use. The girls are laughing and giggling. You know that Kat won’t be home until very late.

     You go to a derelict part of the city. The sun spills pools of red-gold amongst the ruined buildings. You think about finding your friends, the special ones, though you never know where they’ll be and they never tell you their real names. They told you to forget yours, and you try. But somehow they can always find you if they need you. They’ll pick you up in an old car on the way to school, or you’ll find a message in your bag to go to some squalid place in the back streets that your parents would have a fit about if they knew. Sometimes they give you a strong cup of coffee and a cigarette, and you try and smoke it without choking.

     They tell you you don’t need to take shit from anyone anymore. They give you a pamphlet to read, it’s printed on really crappy paper. A tall figure on the covers points at you, his face blurred by the bad printing. But he’s magnetic somehow. They tell you what an important man he is, everyone knows his name, but he’s so well-known that he doesn’t need a name at all. You’d know him anywhere, when he speaks, he doesn’t need words, his actions speak for him. You are his real words they say, the pamphlet is not important.

     You walk to the ruined house where you took a package a few days ago. The large plastic sack you’ve carried has barely fitted into your schoolbag. They had wrapped it in an old embroidered pillowcase before they squeezed it inside after taking out your books. And they told you to walk naturally, though the bag was so heavy you thought you’d fall like a tortoise on its back. You had to walk two kilometres with that bag stuffed full. An old man sitting outside his house joked that you had a big load of school work. You laughed and said it was nothing, it was just a sleeping bag you were carrying. You’d stayed at your friend’s house the night before. The old man nodded and told you to go carefully, be sure not to be too late for school.

     The place is deserted now, and inside, on the floor, are broken bottles and cigarette stubs. There had been boxes and crates in here, but now there is not even a scrape on the floorboards to show how they must have been moved out.

     You climb the stairs to the upper storey, which is open to the sky, and lie on the warm splintered floorboards amongst rubble, surrounded by broken walls. The bloated sun wavers down like a heavy balloon. You feel your blood is red-liquid-gold and you shine, soaked in sweat, it’s so hot you’ll melt into the liquid gold air. The man towers over you, huge and dark, shimmering on the blood red sky. You lie there for ages wondering if you really are going to melt. But then, as the sky dims, the man beckons you, his hand moving slowly. You sit up, and find you are solid, but lighter somehow, like you are not part of your body anymore.

     Then you take the gun from its package. You heft it and feel the balance of it. It’s heavy, but you can handle It, you know you can. Your hands are slippery. It’s getting darker, but the man darkens too, and his shadow looms, looking at you. You know he wants you to do something.

     Someone has left a picture hanging on the wall in front of you. You saw it when you came in. It is a picture of a man in a white robe with rays coming from his head. His hands are stretched out wide and his mouth is open as if he is speaking. You aim the gun at him, flick back the safety and gently squeeze the trigger, and your hands are shaking. You look at the man in the picture, and he goes in and out of your vision and you can’t really see him properly, everything is dark and blotchy red.

     You pull against the curve of the trigger, feeling it move through to the half- cocked position. Your body trembles. Suddenly you’re thrown back onto the floor. A huge wave of sound has ripped out and pinned you down. It has taken all other sounds away, and your ears are ringing and your heart beats crazily. Your hands are numb and bleeding from small cuts, the gun still firmly clenched in your hands, pointing up at the darkening sky. You lie on the floor, breathing deeply, covered in bits of glass and plaster. You lie there until your heart stops racing and you feel able to let the gun from your grip. Your fingers are stiff like twigs and you have to unwind them. Sitting up, you see that the shot has destroyed the picture and left a deep hole in the wall behind. The sun falls behind the building and everything fades. It’s hard to see straight.

     You stand up on wobbly legs and walk over to the damaged wall. The bullet has gone through to the other side. You can feel a draught through the hole. The air is full of dust. You cough a little, your chest hurting. Looking upinto the growing blackness overhead you see a shadow over the emerging stars. With your ears still raging, you go out into the sweltering city.