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

I.
Breaking long silence I offer you this fandango
(this nocturne, this jig, this meringue, this reel, this one-step;
call it a mazurka, a hornpipe, a tango):

II.
I hymn the back of your neck when I stand behind
you and you are in your armchair bent over your
reading, or when you are drying your hair after a
shower, flipping the long hair forward with a brush,
talking the whole time, smoking a cigarette, flipping,
stroking, smoking, and talking, your hair forward past
your face, and especially when you ask me to help you
with the clasp of your necklace or the top of your
dress and I lean the back of my fingers against your
warm skin, I hymn the back of your neck

III.
I chant your eyes for the way they reflect the lights    
and anticipate your laughs, for the slight and dazed    
confusion in the winter mornings when dawn does     
not come early enough, and then protected behind      
the thick glasses, how they change in size and            
intimacy, for the way they reflect the bright skies and
the fluorescent lights, for all that they seem anxious to
express and yet do not, for irony and for joyous         
acceptance, I chant your eyes                                     

IV.
I psalm your thighs
I yodel between your thighs
I scat-sing your earlobes
I trill your lower lip and use vibrato on the upper
I croon your hips, my thumbs strum your pelvis
I warble your toes, I tremolo your soles
I arpeggiate your spine da capo al fine