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

1.  A black-whiskered husband
     Bare-footed
     In a white silky nightshirt.

2.  The mines in the cliff throwing up great briny spirals like souls
                                                                                          escaping
     Feathery fishbones plume the granite vent;
     The insuck hoovers mackeral-shoals; the coarse turf
     Palpitates with them. They stink the peaceful walks.
     Mine-mouths white-lipped with fishbone.

     Then the mine chokes on a whale, and the cliff splits howling,
     A cascade of rubies floods into the night tide.

3.  Waterfalls of milk white seething columns in the mountains
     Curds like white snakes shoal the whey rivers
     London smells like a feeding baby
     Cheesebergs on the high seas

     Flashing grey and yellow with flocks that feed
     The leeward cheesing-ship fires a booming volley
     Birds grise the sky, screeching
     Like winged tomcats
     With bright spades the miners hurry to their berg-work
     Slice off huge wedges for their sweating holds

     A white cloud sails by most brilliantly
     A light sleet of milk replenishes the berg's locks,
     Restoring its slopes, curdles. Milk-loving birds
     Sip upwards at the blue sky-cow's radiant tits.

4.  Mary Reason seethes the snail-broth, never-married.
     I have said what she sees in its smeary surface:
     Visions of cockaigne and qualified plenty.
     That was snail-doodling. Now her knuckles crack
     Like xylophones, repeating "to work, to work,"
     And, like a cottage loaf,
     She crumbles her husband.

5.  In a white silky nightshirt
     Bare-footed
     Scratchy with crumbs
     A headless corpse.

6.  Her talking kettle, the letters of the steam
     White news;
     The written question posted
     Within the brain-hole of the skull
     In what manner shall it answer?

     You seethe it, it whistles.

     She has a whistle: a bone
     Covered with pizzle.
     She gives it a warming first
     In her important place
     She can call them up now
     Her hand is a small cedar-smelling
     Workchest of bone tools.

7.  The head severed
     Boiled in pitch
     Bolt-eyed
     Lip-gape
     Its breathless voice
     Whistles

     Mockery

     "Xylocide, xylotome, xylomort"

     Mockery

8.  Under the bench
     Hunkered in shavings
     That's not Joseph planing lintels!
     Not Mary painting doorways?
     Below the bench
     Among curly shavings
     in the smell of cedar
     Who whittles gallows?

9.  This damnable head is bottled Jesus!

10. The chaste kiss 
     Of a mother
     Brushes
     His forehead
     Says:
     "What's it like inside me?"

     Answer

     "Witchcraft, Mother."

11. We are in the plenty beyond plenty
      A star dripping with light the size of a cartwheel
      Hangs over the bonfire. The blind boy holds
     A white stick dusty with ashes.
     Across his throat, snakes
     A healing scar, across the bonfire
     A complete world softly calls
     "Marius?" Their eyes open.