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

This bright hell is America.
A hot wind curls the leaves
and chases the dogs to dig
deep into the baked soil.
It’s one hundred and seven today
and grasshoppers from outer space
are dancing in my brain.
The air-conditioner is broke
so I run a tub of cold water
and submerge every half hour.
There’s a wet trail from the bath
to the couch and nearby fan.
The air is so heavy with grain
dust it clouds the eyes.
The wheaties are up from
forlorn Oklahoma with
their caravan of combines.
I crave winter. I want a blizzard
that blinds me to my fellow man.
Arctic brain fever.

These are my sunset days.
Every other day I grieve for the me
that was and most every man or
woman I see fills me with contempt.
Seven out of eleven Skins in town are
hang-around-the-fort welfare addicts
with no clue to breaking the cycle.
Every weekend their drunken madness
fills the county jail where they’re
happy to suck the public teat, but
I’m far beyond embarrassment
because the whites are
even worse actors.

It goes beyond the cliché that most
white people in Cowturdville
could be hillbillies except for
the fact that these are the Plains.
Their Christian souls simply
cannot digest the pain
of Indians.

So, drive on, rednecks, to the edge
of your flat world and fall
down to a better hell
where half million dollar
combines are eating
the heart of these prairies
and you have one lucky
foot out of the flaming
lake of poverty.

Here, in this Panhandle town,
farm kids speed desperately up
and down the main drag wearing
their baseball caps backwards, hands
out the windows, stackin’, throwing
gang signs they’ve seen on the tube
while their parents, almost glad
they are no longer young, sit home
and smile and truly believe
those pictures we’re now getting
from Mars have meaning...

I haven’t been laid
in more than two years
but there’s this fat lady,
Louise, with varicose veins,
who calls me late at night
and begs me to come over
to her trailer for a drink.
I don’t drink, I tell her.

I DON’T drink, I remind myself
but it’s a daily struggle to stop
myself from re-enrolling in
the University of Beer and Barley.
As far as I can tell, I’m one of the few
people on my street who’s gone
to college and I often wish I
never had, but jeez Louise,
I think I’m starting to like
it here in this American
heartland.

Thunderheads are forming
and the sweet-ass rain
of forgiveness is
in the air.