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

Now here’s a good one.

Kilcar festival,
Scrubbed up shiny like a bachelor
After a meagre week
In the back of Donegal.
Peaks I had no name for
Tearing sky and sea into triangles
And all water uphill.

A nose to my ear in the dark
As quick as a blown leaf –
The Bride of Kilcar.

Eighteen, and mad with the thrill
Of her one road town gone antic.
Draggled veil,
Make-up blotting,
Shivering,
Giddy breathless from her crowning.

Face alight
For grabbing a stranger
And dance, chance
Or the end of the world.

And would I like to go to a Party?

Cartooned ructions of drunk shadows
In the seep of every pub window.
Silhouettes side-sliding,
Going down in the gutter.

A band on a lorry
Thrashing the downpour,
Slinging dustbins of heavy metal at the moon.
Young ones jumping to the pulse
Of their drenched northern fiesta.

I held her off
At half alarmed arm’s length
But with a feeling half like luck in me.

Her wedding dress
Was swan’s wing,
A sodden tissue
Strewn out from her grip on me
To the flooded kerb
Like she might be washed away
And drag me with her
On a cascade of sly chat and flattery,

And would I like to go to a party

My smile
Was honey slathered across my chin;
Sticky, foolish.
Buttered up in a doorway
By a girl half my age.

Not up for it
Of course,
But running with the thought,
Laughter dripping back down my throat,

To where I saw me and this girl
Chasing through the loose torrent
In a lash of drink
And the glee of misrule.
Her fresh gown of love
Trailing soaked feathers
Up the pelting street.

Come away to the party now

But I’d laughed my face into lamplight
Spilling the scrap iron of my years
Into the full yellow,
And her eyes.

Her laughter never stopped,
But her hanging off me
Broke.
And she fell up the street
Squealing her daftness.

She turned, grinning
And I shouted –
I’ll come away to the party

We both got a slice of the joke
But I think it cut me deepest.