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

You know the picture will come again.
The back of the grey chair eases down.
You’re horizontal. Just a scrape, he says.
You imagine the smile inside the mask,
try to guess what his breath smells like,
anything to stop the picture coming.

You knot your fingers loosely across the rise
and fall of your stomach. He’s got the probe.
He’s picking. He might say the numbers
of your teeth, call them out to the woman
rustling in the corner. The radio might be on.
A fly might be trapped against the window.

Nothing will stop it. It arrives when he sets
the scraper going, when the high whine
enters your head and you feel him pressing.
A photo, black and white, grainy, of a man
being lowered into a tank of icy water.
It’s an experiment to see how long he'll live.

The dread, the numb terror of his stare.
You can’t imagine him looking any other way.
He is that moment. That’s how they did it.
Observing the reactions, not the man.
Poison gas, excisions, the panicky breath,
how a body, an organism, wants to live.

Other things you’ve read about are going on.
Batons, boots, hands tied back and hoisted up
between the shoulders, hoods, electrodes, stonings.
A judge will pass sentence and make it right.
A person will march another person to a place of death.
It’s top shelf stuff. You shouldn’t know about this.

Who’s more degraded, the watcher or the watched?
He says rinse. The pink stuff tastes of Dentine.
Rinse and spit. The scouring foam is eddying
down the plughole. The white bowl glistens.
The rustling woman is handing you a tissue.
Quickly, now. Wipe your mouth, get up, walk out.