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

A fan stirs a slight provocation,
too lazy to curl the air
or twist the smoke which broadens
from his roll-up
into the colour of his eyes.
He eats bacon,
thinks about cuff-links.

A bus draws up;
its shadow, a menace,
takes a trace of lines from the eyes
of the waitress who smiles
her face from its plainness,
shouts an order between tables,
curling red-painted nails
around a ball-point.

He smiles,
places his empty cup on the Formica-topped table,
apologises for the unfinished breakfast,
sits back down with his cigarette,
glances at the clock,
reconstructs the chaos, the dust,
shuts out the heat, the screams.
Change rings through the till.

The shopping bag with the herbs
(which make all the difference)
is found in the rain next to the collar of her coat;
her name, written on the size-tab, runs into the street -
blue ink, a tiny vein of mineral.
The herbs still fresh.

Glass is easy, swept aside and binned
but blood is stubborn, dark and vulgar on tarmac.

The shop-dummy with the turquoise dress (which suits her)
stands with perfect poise in the window;
the only blemish, a slight scratch below the knee,
revealing a whiteness of fish.
Just visible are the lobes of her unpierced ears.

She holds her red lips slightly apart,
smiles thinly for the workmen
as they shutter up her window
behind boards of soft pine,
beneath a thump of nails.

He thinks about another cup,
watches the second hand sweep past the three,
stands up, puts on his coat, goes to buy the cuff-links.