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

I don’t remember the name of the game,
only how much it made us laugh -
my sister, our grandmother and me - tears
rolling down our cheeks, sprawled in the sun
on that pocket-handkerchief of lawn.

The cards were in a rusty toffee tin.
Grandma read us the story, making it up,
later, after the paper got lost, pausing,
now and then, to take a card
and hand it to one of us to read aloud:

‘The bride, Miss Ethel Montclair, was marrying
her childhood sweetheart, Mr Cyril Lloyd,
who worked as a (turn up a card) broom-handle.
The bride looked radiant in a (turn up a card)
smelly old rabbit-skin, walking up the aisle
beside her father, elegant in his best (turn up
a card) chamber-pot. Her bridesmaid, Miss Nellie
Standish, carried her bouquet of roses and
(turn up a card) something the cat brought in.
There were nearly one hundred guests, including
(turn up three cards) last week’s fly-blown Sunday-joint,
a pair of auntie’s coms, and a bowler hat...’

It was pure anarchy, and we hugged ourselves,
couldn’t believe our luck. A far cry
from the games we played at home, the family
saga where, for no good reason, we woke
as (turn up a card) bad, wicked girls,
never learning the trick of how to be (turn up
a card) seen and not heard; where, in my round
National Health specs, I was always cast
as (turn up a card) a clumsy clot; and where,
after we’d run away from home
and been brought back, our mother chased us
round the kitchen-table, waving
(turn up a card) a broom-handle.