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

Laying out the cards in a room of paradise, he is left
with two questions: was he abused as a child, and what is
this Eden which haunts us all?

Her habit was to seize the knot
                           she had tied and shake it
                                                      a little up and down to make it firm,
She was lovemaking with her dressing hands;
                           ‘What’s that Mummy?’
                                                      points to his little spike...
Dressing the small boy
                           riveting him into his buttons
                                                      in a massage-sequence called
School rules that are clothes,
                           the tie striped in dazzle-pattern
                                                      regulation camouflage...
Ten per cent of breath
                           rises from the bosom of the shirt,
                                                      pours upwards through this
Cricketing flue; he loves
                           the dabbling of the air
                                                      in its bare openings,
This plunge into the chest,
                           this folding back into reveres;
                                                      this avian collar-bone
With its dazzling plumage;
                           you speak to him
                                                      or to his cleaving plumage,
The open collar which is
                           the hearth of the heart-updraft
                                                      its nervy swallowings like
A swallow in the hand
                           its apple of Adam bulging
                                                      like a boy’s prodder in his Y-fronts,
The private dick
                           in his underpant offices...
                                                      I get him talking
To watch that nimble throat activating,
                           I do not listen to what he says,
                                                      his larynx bobs like a full basket
He declares he is not interested
                           in sex; I read his cleavage otherwise...
But my mother undressing my throat
                           throws the gates open, the lappets
                                                      dovetailing down
Like wings of the Holy Spirit
                           on which the school cricketers fly
                                                      little reverse angels
Since their collars
                           open in front, photographed in
                                                      winged flocks,
Like heads of the god Hypnos
                           and the throats flying of
                                                      Aphrodite’s doves...
The ideal Vee
                           unfolds to mid-breastbone
                                                      resting its love-point
On the thymus, that gland of youth...
                           though I am not a cricketer
                                                      I walk with my yoni exposed,
I am dressed to play
                           a rainmaking game,
                                                      my female place struck open
Her female small ghost swaying about me
                           mingling in memory with my boy-smell,
                                                      she dressed me restlessly
Breathing the air of me
                           as she dressed herself
                                                      so we were dressed
To go out with each other...
                           leaving the neck bare
                                                      I could sense the whole garden
With my throat,
                           just as in the sex-marking
                                                      of certain monkeys,
The vulva disclosed
                           appears floating over the heart...
Once the rain came thundering
                           and clothed me with its electrical silk
                                       and made my school-clothes
Shine with its magic;
                           I rolled in the garden soil
                                                      among the flowers
In my electrocution
                           as the rain turned the earth
                                                      into high-tension paradise
Disguised as mud...
                           did next door take any
                                                      spy-notice? It were best
For them not to tell or reveal
                           they had seen the virgin boy
                                                      consummating in his bridebed...
The triangle created the throat
                           was a magic that gave off its steams
                                                      as my heart beat slow as thunder;
I was garden and boy
                           in the same bed of clothes,
                                                      the clothes a bride-bed,
And I shuddered and my heels drummed
                           like one who has cut his throat
                                                      open at the neck to prepare
For the next lightning-strike.