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

Terrestrial stallions rode clear of the empyrean as Fred the greengrocer from Walsall kept his thumb unobtrusively (like) on the scales of his veg stall in the market at Wolverhampton on those freezing mornings, at the same time keeping a quarter eye on the Moly clock while serving the housewives of Wolverhampton who in turn would be serving the dietary and matrimonial needs of their husbands after the Wolves’ home game that afternoon; said Fred: They’re never the same team as that great side of the 1950s - never; you had Jimmy Mullen, Stan Cullis, Billy Wright, Slater, Clamp & Flowers - now it’s all gone down the stuff, as far as I’m concerned; the Old Gold’s brass now.

Driving to work each morning he would admire a Tudor dwelling with prolapsus of the womb, insisting to his devoted and long suffering spouse that one day it would be theirs at a knock down price, to which she’d retort: Fall down price more like. They’ll have to give it away before I’d even consider it - it’d be buying trouble. Every month, if the take was good they would drive out and dine at a swank hotel on the outskirts of Worcester for what Fred called: A food and mouth epidemic. Of his ABBA phase - of his reworking of their lyrics, what can one say? Unfortunately, one example only remains extant: There was something in your hair last night - it caught alight, Fernando

I received this at first hand from the said Fred Lawton of Walsall, a man of exemplary character, and I can confirm that the above is a true and accurate record and I should like to add here and now that I worked with him on the wards of the British Military Hospital, Kamunting, in the State of Perak, North Malaya, between the years 1952 and 1953, in the humble capacity of nursing orderly; and further, I can vouchsafe as to its veracity, although I am also aware that it is inadvisable to sacrifice a good story for mere accuracy- an old adage from the island of Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, or so I am reliably informed.