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

CADAIR – CHAIR
Tilted and filled with pillows
A baby’s daytime bed
A wooden chair with arms
Sturdy and tilted against the wall
Intensive care for a small girl’s fever

DRYCH – MIRROR
Mirror, mirror on the wall
The big girls are going to the dance
To dance the night away –
They titivate in turn in the mirror
Sometimes I go back
Say hello to the dragon
On the road signs –
Hair springs from metal curlers
Like sausages twirling this way and that
Pond’s vanishing cream, bourgeois rouge
In a round box.

CROESO – WELCOME
The dragon says ‘Good to see you’
On the road signs –
Can you smell
‘Evening in Paris’ and ‘Californian Poppy’
Cheap scents for the dance ?

BWRDD – TABLE
Remember ‘Go to bed Tom’ game
Where hands bang on the table
Where father’s hands were the champions
In spite of blue scars
A tablecloth with flowers. Embroidered daisies.

She paints a Cupid’s bow with carmine
Watch the reflection in the mirror
I go back sometimes
One day I shall do that.

A touch of vaseline on eyebrows and lashes
Stockings with a seam if lucky
Or brown stain and a black pencil
Keep the seam straight
I watch. I purse my lips and watch
Cold water drips into an enamel bowl
Below the mirror.  Turn the brass tap to off.

PESWCH – COUGH
I only see what’s there
The father sits in a chair and he coughs.
She thinks about the music
And boys.  Still the father coughs.

DAWNS – DANCE
I go back sometimes
I sit on the sofa in this dream
Watch the girls
Who are going to the dance
Rouged and powdered
And hair in sausages
In tidy rows now.
Dance the night away
‘Ampola, my pretty little poppy’
And ‘Jealousy’.
I wish I could.
They think about boys
And babies
(not yet, please God)
But babies come without
Permission.

BACHGEN – BOY
She married him
Because he was a good dancer
And because
She was pregnant.

PWLL – PIT
I watch the baby
In the tilted chair
While the grandfather coughs.
The girl is married
Briefly,
For death in the pit
Comes without
Permission.

The girl widow sings
‘Amapola’ while
The baby reaches out
From the tilted chair
And the old man coughs
And spits into the
Coal fire.

I go back sometimes.
Sometimes I go back.
I only see what’s there.