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

The river’s neon blusher is rising through rain,
through sewers and gutters and cast-iron grids,

through faked alibis, failed marriages, through
suicide and homicide and fumbled, sad affairs.

She’s out alone tonight, lounging on a high stool,
waiting something more than this,

eye-lashes lowered, checkbones cool against
a chromium rail. A single rum, her fingers

slack on the glass, her stacked heels rising
and falling with that song. Those lads

laughing in the back room, spinning pool
queues, strutting to the jukebox, born to

the manner, the lash, to everlasting pints
of Stella, baseball caps, unlaced trainers,

jeans loose against designer groins.
The lash cracks rain on glass, the river

glitters up slimed brickwork, plucking at
each streetlight’s yellow blossom.

Blatant lips, an emptied glass, ice melting
the bar stool’s itch against her thighs; her short

dress, parted breasts, the lads laughing at nothing,
but something pressing with its insistence to be

somewhere and someone. The lash coiling, her
tongue dipping, the last drop, the jukebox

telling us to dance or die, her fingernails
smoothing hair under the lights’ hot knife.

Then the lads standing in a line, still laughing,
lashing the porcelain, asking dumbly

Is this what it means, to dance and die?
If only they could speak, but can’t,

returning for another round to find that lass,
that slapper gagging for it, gone.

Gone into rain, into the myths of Friday night
sex that never happened yet like this.

They lash down a pint, then another; she traces
sweat down a taxi window. Where to, love?

wakes her, the driver smiling at his meter,
slackening his turban where she’d like

to lay the lash of fuscia lips, loosen his rope
of oiled hair, then lower herself to meet

the river’s rise. But listen: she’s whispering,
she’s whispering. To anywhere.