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

Call all my lovers bald and numb
The redgut poet and the willowy one
You have given me whispers and crocodile tears
Lies tied in ribbons and twisted suspenders
A beautiful discord A ceramic cat
A Japanese postcard with cant on the back
What shall I do with the baksheesh
The beaded snake the woven garters
My elaborate mistake?
I’m high on the carpet with those wild pink lips
I’m peach fluff and dandruff and fish in your zip
Give me the wipe off wash off the brush off kiss
Run home to your wife and your three shiny kicks
I’m a marriage scape-goat a duplicate bride
A grass stained petticoat refusing to hide
Vagina dentata come chop off your head
I’m the last virgin martyr with a honey wax candle
and an axe in my bed

And even as the stuck pig bleeds in the cobbled yard
I lie here picking the spot on the inside of my lip
and thinking of money
He said as it was he who brought the coiled gold pot
then the snake within it must surely be his
He said I could look at it even raise the lid but that
the worship belonged to him and that he needed to worship
it more than I
Your whole body he said in that sequinned sheath dress
imitates my passion
You are cruel and hard with a bite in that gold tooth
not easily forgotten
It is too simple I have become the copy of the thing he craves
I have other needs of my own
I will dress in pig skin
I will beat the pork into thin strips and put them to dry
in the afternoon sun
I will hunt with the bait for a man who needs a woman
bladdered and angry such as myself

So you took me to tea in the lion’s mouth
Laughed as you swept the crumbs beneath the barbed tongue
and talked of meaty things
So you said the beast is sleeping
but why do you sit there naked with that split bamboo
swatting the flies that lick the lion’s eye?
Why do you lie on the twitching tail and pick your teeth?
You curly headed bitch in my head
Why do you press your hairless chest in the lion’s fur
and boast beneath his nose of the fat men you ate?
Why do you scratch his toes?
I have ten stitches in my thigh and I can’t stop laughing
So why do you sit in my lap
you stupid bitch?

It could be argued that if you fed a bull on sugar
he would become sweet tempered
I have a warm house and a white car
and a desperate need
to bite you

I pull my cotton dress from under my knees
I sit here spitting grass seed
The woman he lives with sweats under the arm
Chops onion loudly into small wet rings
She sniffs her face is red
Crushed garlic
I remember the smell of her food on his breath
the taste on my lips I had turned away
and that time when I pulled at his zip
Nosed into the curly hair and smelt her there
a rabbit in aspic
I sit in the cafe
My bare feet cool on the polished stone floor
I drink iced milk
I watch the flies clean their legs on the white china tureen
the fat man pick at his trout
The waitress bends over wipes ice-cream from the table top
She is sticky and hot between her breasts
I scrape fish heads on to the side plate
I watch the french cheese spread in the box

The wine gets hot
I try to write him a card I have nothing to say
I feel nothing
I stare at the queen ants squashed into the pavement
I lick my fingers and walk away

There are some things you cannot put into a stamped envelope
and send through the post
I have a swan’s egg that must be quite bad inside by now
because I cannot think of a way to convey the message

We bought a small place down a single lane
He carried a large scrubbed table there on his back
and twenty four yards of denim
He bought a folk art tea-pot with an odd lid
A scratched varnish dresser with clover carved in the top
and a plastic tube for the kitchen tap
He gave me a key I went there alone
Sat in the huge woodworm chair and looked at his photographs
He takes sad pictures of sunflowers middles and lavatory doors
The light bursting through black trees and mangy dogs
sniffing about in seaweed
In the corner on the floor he stood two stone pots
They are still empty
I think he is waiting for me to turn up with a plant
swaddled in newspaper leaking earth
Something weak and leafy a small birth of the place
A reason for coming if only to water the thing...

Do you know I spent all afternoon weaving small strands
of white silk together into a sort of sash to tie up my hair
It is falling out like my teeth and my heart
And that small part of sugar you pressed into my palm
dribbled down my arm when I threw up my hands
to worship the sun
Now I have nothing I stand bare in a wig of white silk
plaiting a crown from my fallen hair

I am queen of the may
tangled and bangled queen of the hay
Missed the appointment and kept him at bay
Ate suet pudding red wine and cream
Pined for the day I was slim and brimming
Bright eyes skin on the porridge
I watched him carve a track with his spoon
the slack gash swill up with cream
Think of that sunday afternoon
in the grass and the clean vest he put on
Queen of the may thorns in his flesh
Small white flowers that snow on his chest
stick in the curds and whey

I’m a wild woman with wide white hips
I squeeze delicate men through my finger tips
I wear faded scarlet and varicose hose
I’m a jaded harlot with a nose for chaos
Cross your fingers and grip your vest
I’m obsessed with kicks below the waist
I’m a blond surprise with hairs on my knees
The eclair in my thighs is a hugh cream tease
I like big bellied men with straight white teeth
A weighted fight to gully beneath

There was a time when I could gaze
into your grey green eyes and whisper
of doves and down and flower buds
Whole days spent laced in your hot skin
breathing in your sweat breath
and hopelessness
Now you depress me
I feel subtracted lacking in the content
to make you swing
You moon about like a dead puppet
I am the one who cut the strings. .
you remind me
I am sick with the oneness of your love
It bores me claws at my choice of things
Leaves me sapped absent an old baby’s rattle
You shake at my head
Weep at the dribbled silence
Pick pick at the pieces
I sit at the end of your bed a bent white bone
You sigh
‘What are you thinking?’
How can I tell you my mind is at home
frying a bacon sandwich