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

in the city
which is sometimes what is meant by spirit
                                                  John James

sorbonne: stone-bosom
students in broken film
across the rue to cotton sleep.

in dark water the first drink
starred with white             in daylight
what is that?

flick-history wiped white by its representation.

throat-rush of where
movements lost in oblonged black
like a parody of what you mean.
strippedlight              nightflush.

map out the day in bread & eating
                              unmake the bed
relax & drift like flaked wallpaper onto the yellow street
& start to walk:
map-page traced to memory
temporary cut & paste
like finger doodles in frost
transparent as lines on mothwings
sketched to loft windows
impulse of the flutter tug
down the rue de la whoever.
wet bricks        typewriter pins
steps letter shapes
unknown in languages
from skeleton keys of suggestions.
these streets three jokes all day’s been waiting to make
                                                                  practical-like.
look love & remember for later:
we turned the picture to revolution-secured brick.

in notre-dame & sacre-couer
I’m trying to cross conversation’s meridian & listen in
useless as a leech on a horseman’s chainmail.
to break superstitions like pink wafers
to make easy easy
like the wet moons of the smoking crepe-maker.

through sleetstones to fluent fumes
arm-to-arm & warm
down cobblestones into the downstairs bar –
green neon rose that glass grows.
we order with half-points & sit where candles dip
like oiled animals washing in a lake
        ( now s on the retina & your fingers ghostwriting me