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

As if with a beginner’s scissors
you peel the sun and on your arms
each strip hung out to dry -you too

need steps, reaching up to plant
the way all grapevines clasp
something still damp, careful

how to fold and your child’s sleeves
almost singing, almost
one holds the other, up, up and you

are picking a small blouse
already pink, opening
for your warm mouth and wings.

   ***

For your birth date a raft
kept low, inscribed - you need
a cake that juts
just above the waterline :every cornerstone

stays wet so the days
will cling, the sky each year
warmer, weaker, on its way and home

- it takes balloons, icing
and always in orbit, currents
half spray, half drift, half
sodapop breaking apart
from inside, windows tugged
by a paper straw, songs whose center
is the exact place
only the sound a shore makes

- it takes your name
stuffed into stone the way every bottle
will hug some note
still calling out, lost - it takes
that deep breath: a sea
blown off course and fleets
sent across with the smoke
with these candles even now
bending over and the darkness.

   ***

What you hear could be a mountain
- this is more than just a toy, it’s bent
the way every arch sucks up the ground
makes a fountain from trees and galaxies
-take it! use both hands

in case there’s a wing
or the light that never closes
leaves a space where the darkness between
pulls your arms overhead
- what you hear

could be grass, it’s hard to guess
but the silence must come
from what once was nothing but sunlight
was only a feathery whisper
taking so long, and this flower
even you have forgotten.

   ***

I can’t find the ground - you almost wave
as if some stone could work loose
what light was left from the dirt
and you are still asleep

- you don’t sleep anymore, leaves
get in  the way and evenings
fall off - your eyes are your lips
fixed forever on that kiss thrown open
and everyone on Earth airborne
having the same dream the same night
so childlike and at last

you sleep, mouth to rotting mouth
with the stench from my shadow
and the sky too is sent ahead
spreadeagle, holding fast
and swallowing my arms.

   ***

From some catalog
and I’m still lifting the Earth
for valleys and more shadow

- I have three shadows now, one
kept dark, covered with moonlight
and between my shoulders

broken mountainside: the huge UPS truck
creaking as if the shovel
and leverage - a cardboard lid

and everything I touch is brown
taking hold the way all boxes
open the ground then turn away

and though there’s no dirt inside
my hand already aches
- I don’t know where to sign my name.

   ***

It takes more flickering, wires
tied the way a harp is held
and my wrist further till it turns
between two suns at once

- they don’t last long, one
already night, tired
though my fingers still give it milk
and lullabies - one

throwing away its light
as if my arm would rest for a while
and on this table with dishes
set for flowers, skies side to side

- I can’t hold on, my hands
half lightning, half this bulb
already twinkle, twinkle, little
singing and the dark.

   ***

They work these claims the way a hypnotist
will snap two fingers, take a bow
though you won’t remember lifting moons
waving them, letting them dry -tides

know how to lull a moon till its light
lets go, cools - you learn to forget
in front an audience half sand
half rake, half your arms tied together

- twice each day every day this water
sifts the shallows for a place to dry
and you throw back your blue eyes
as if all moons begin as a flower

kept underwater to press against your body
- a fluttering that passes through the Earth
through your heart and loneliness

and slowly, slowly, even asleep
you forget in front your hands
suddenly smooth, shining on the water.