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

Uma rhymes w. orgasm,
Uma is the demon I incant to deliver me
As vertebrae curve, contort backward in chants of ache
& scalp scours hair in arc after arc
Almost to the forehead, eyes furrowing
The whiteness of the knuckles that grip the gambolling headboard
& Thurman is the exhalation,
The peeling off of adhesive labels from hirsute lungs
Or is Uma a unique type of tart citrus fruit
Neither pomegranate nor navel but nippled
W. rind dextrin rich, w. gooey flesh slinked in white tabinet
Fun to kyanize w. a hypo (or Thurman's lance)
As they rest, cupped, in mauve polystyrene mattresses
Or is Uma the skin at the nape of knees
White as milk, texture of eyelids or rose-petals wrinkled
Or Thurman an adornment, a trim to taffeta hems
Or is Thurman a little-known Detroit car manufacturer
Now defunct like Cord, La Salle, Studebaker or Packard,
Noted for its whale baleen grille & tulip leaf wings
Known as Umas which extended into running boards
Where gangsters stood in the forties aiming
Thurman grease-guns onehanded at barber shop windows
Where Thurmans, the first mass-produced latex condom
Were offered for weekends, or was Thurman
The Nazi who, in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russians
Flew to Paraguay in a Junkers Ju52 (codenamed Uma)
Laden w. gold bullion & objets d'art (most notably Monet's
'Uma in daffodils w.sheep' & Gauguin's 'Uma scratching')
Or was Uma a type of Antipodean flightless bird
Or was Uma only what was heard at second hand, a third party lie
& Thurman a cursed Egyptologist strangled in his study
By assailants unknown, sherds of ten thousand year old bandage
Snagged in his snarled fingertips the only clue
Or was Thurman the pet name for Byron's bear at Cambridge
Or Uma the spirifer shape growth in the brains of basilisks.
Or Uma, as the low ululation emanating from the thorax
& Thurman, its chafing on the uvula
Causing a low baritone murmur, a spissated growling
Throaty & sexy, commonly associated
As a symptom of advanced nymphomania
Or an American film actress of the nineteen-nineties
Who once had to kiss Richard Gere while I had to watch
& who became responsible for this diallage
Henceforth to be identified in dictionaries as Umatopoiea:
& this was the beginning of language.