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

Cold air fingers the gap between glass and metal frame. In here it is stuffy and stilted. Eleven floors up and the shriek of sirens slides up from the street. Trains clank along into the distance. Occasionally somewhere metal scrapes on metal with a sparking sound. Neon blossoms in the dusk and squares of light float in the skeletons of skyscrapers. The green and blue moulders into grey and brown. This morning I watched leaves blown into the silted river. Finally it is 5pm - time to negotiate traffic.

                                          ***

Dawn mizzle blows under my umbrella. My mascara re-liquefies and my hair curls against my wet cheek. Orange streetlights make shadows on the slick pavement, the skeleton of a tree thrown against my path. The river is sluggish with the early light and a single dark barge. I jump back. A grey car speeds away, throwing oily water out of the road.

Dread clenches its small fist around my heart. Up eleven floors dripping in the elevator, it squeezes tighter. The computer stares back at me. I am too hot, already stifled. Through the next eight hours blankly processing and processed, I am not.

Long and short hands crawl over the clock’s face. I try not to watch.

Quarter to five. I breathe out - very - slowly.

Locking the workstation, something is freed.

The pavement is dry. Cold slides under my coat. I walk faster -

                                     ***
The afternoon stretched me until my elastic snapped. The man going up to the fifteenth floor says “I thought my watch had stopped at least six times; it has been such a long day.” I exit the elevator at the thirteenth. Heat prickles along my spine and pools under my arms.
lamatifledoverheatingevaporating -
                                                      b r e a t h l e s s
                                   s
                                                           a
                                                                     g
                                                                     g
                                                                      i
                                                                            n
                                                                                    g
                 emptied out, only trace minerals left in the brain pan -

                                  ***

The sky is dying to darkblue. The air sinks down under the weight of cold. Train clanking, a line of lights along a track of steely dark. I hurry, folded against the clawing wind. It rakes across my cheeks, tears the working day from my skin. I shake under its attentions, worse than a drunk trying to pick you up as you wait to cross the traffic lights. Its breath reeks of petrol fumes. Dust tears my eyes. I hurry, heels hammering the pavement, heading for the mouth of the Underground.

Swallowed into its subterranean gut, I scurry down grimed corridors towards the borborygmus rumble of the commuter carriages. Glass doors snap behind me and I sink - gaze blankly ahead counting the stations.

Until home.

                                  *** 

Dirtied rain drips onto the parapet from the window ledge above. A slime of green and brown smears itself across the concrete. A pigeon hunches head to puffed breast before taking flight into the grey drizzle. It vanishes instantly, shrouded in low clouds against the city skyline.

The sound of traffic sloshes up from the street. There are a lot of trucks passing heavy down in the wet. Rain bleaches the view. The world is muffled by falling water.

I forgot my umbrella today.

                                    ***

Feet fall fiat on concrete paving. I daydream of damp grass bright in clear dawn light. My feet are splayed and naked covered in dew.

A car speeds by with a heavy beat blasting from its stereo. I see light dappling the green through apple leaves. A bird sings three notes. A crystal drop rolls slowly between my toes.

I hear a shout. I start walking quickly, avoiding the cracks in the pavement.

                                    ***