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

Have these happy memories been planted
by a cruel doctor? I look for clues
in these piles of slippery photographs.
The unslung smiles of the pair in this faded
one shrink in the empty bitter freeze
of the present. Am I him and is she dead?

Their wedding (our wedding?), steaming smiles and dead
tired. Surely they’ve been faked and planted?
Here are relatives in a jolly Grecian freeze-
frame of brimming nail paring grins. Palpable clues.
The firebombed library of Now faded
when I found these spiteful photographs.

Like Marlowe and Spade I look at the photographs.
But am I detective or suspect? Is he dead;
buried away while I skulk behind faded
curtains the colour of scars? His body planted
in some scrap heap. My sheets yield no clues.
Was she drugged and dragged to some deep freeze?

My wide and greedy eyes freeze
to see this next set of photographs:
a swaddle of waxy fury and two smirks. Clues
in this set of baby snaps. Is he dead
set on torture, the twisted imp who planted
these taunts? There’s no wife or baby here, only faded

wallpaper itching with damp’s black blight. I read faded
gooey love letters by a candle’s light in the freeze
of midnight. A last, creased set planted
in my jacket. Three people in these photographs.
A party: two beers lean and leer; one red eyed, dead
drunk looking their way. Their hidden faces, clues

to my gaping misery. Do these snaps clue
me in to why night’s grasping kisses faded
away? Why she’s missing but nobody’s dead?
Whose are those leaning heads? A squalid frieze
framed in the last of the photographs
reveals a car and two shadows planted.

Who planted these doctored photographs?
The clues can’t explain this gasping freeze.
Everything bright has faded. Is she dead? Am I?