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

The text is the monologue of a man in his twenties with an American accent. His younger self is acted/danced by the BOY, about age 10. The boy’s MOTHER is in her early to mid-thirties.

(Fighting action between MOTHER and BOY including slapstick slaps and falls.) My mother is not just an accountant, she’s as thin and independent as the number one. She even wears flat hats that slant, like the top of that unbending numeral. When, around age ten, I told her that, she got concerned about my use of words. All language makes her nervous, but the fancy kind unnerves her.

     She took me to a doctor, and I was diagnosed as metaphoric. It’s a serious condition. I saw an animal in each kid on the block, and they were rarely bunny rabbits. Martin the mountain lion lived next door; his sister was all sparrow. Families mix species, I concluded. My mother said my illness was worsening.

     I told her, “OK, let’s try another metaphor. If you are number one and daddy is a zero, then the two of you don’t add up to a pair.” That blew her hat off, and she took me to the doctor again, who prescribed silence in our home. He called it tactfulness.

(BOY executes split, somersault, cartwheel, handspring, headstand etc. with MOTHER at first as ringmaster or Master of Ceremonies, introducing the stunts.) Maybe everyone has a generator inside that manufactures energy. And when one part of the body no longer uses it, the current must go elsewhere. As soon as my mouth stopped making metaphors, my legs began to whirl. My torso rolled and dived; it tumbled, turning upside down.

(MOTHER enters the gymnastic acts.) My jumping body frightened me. I begged to see the doctor. But my mother was ecstatic now. She called me “an acrobat” to other accountants and gave them lecture - demonstrations on the physics of a fall. I thought, “Balance, lady, is exactly what you lack. Your home life is off center. Watch out for yourself.” But I didn’t say that out loud. Instead of talking, we twirled.

(BOY starts juggling, MOTHER acts as assistant.) The quieter I got, the more I needed action. Gymnastics was no longer enough. Before and after school, on weekends, in the evenings, I threw everything around me in the air. Articles of clothing. Bananas and assorted vegetables. But when I reached for the dishes, my mother reacted. Suddenly she was afraid of gravity, velocity, and me.

     I didn’t say a word. Her best friend spoke for me. She told my mother, “Better watch it, lady. Your son's no circus lion you can trot around. He won’t do tricks and stunts for you much longer. He’s far too fierce for that, too wild. Can’t you see there’s mountain lion in him? Like your neighbour child, ferocious little Martin.”

     It wasn’t tactful at all, yet my mother didn’t send her to a doctor. She gulped that fancy language down.