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

WE ARE knot-like: tight, coiled, and looped into
each other, I feel the bones of his hips pressing
hard into the soft of my side. We have been like
this for hours, unmoving, moved past the keenest
of our needs. It cannot last.

                                     *
The mouth is slightly parted, soundless, but not
nearly silent; there is a soft, wet whistle hiss of air,
a slippage from deep inside. Tiny hairs circle the
mouth, angry against the pale chin, pricks of dark
like reeds poking the surface of gilded water. The
hair lies heavy on these sheets, in this light a rich
gold-brown against the dark purple of the cloth. The
curls are large, generous, different from the small,
almost circular waves that cover the chest and
stomach. Those flow in a single stream from the
navel, gathering might at the base of the ribs, forking
finally into two rivers that break on curved pectorals
and eddy in quiet pools around the nipples.
   Tawny with the heat of the day, the left arm
lies bent like a broken arrow, the flat of the palm
resting under the head. The biceps globe the skin,
causing the deep net of veins - like the mossed
hair under the arms, glossy with a hint of sweat -
to pulse just beneath the surface, dark blue lines
that throb under the brown, echoing the grooves
etched on the exposed palm, the mesh of lines
snaking past the deep cuts of the mind, the life,
skirting the calluses where fingers join palm,
flowing to the very tips which lie coiled around
the heft of the air.

                                  *
For a long while there has been no sound other
than us. A breeze stirs the pale gold curtains
around the bed, scented with lotus oil, but that is
all. An image comes with it, of a burnished barge
hovering on the water. The wind then, perfumed
too, heating us with its strokes. Fragments of
piped music, of eyes upon us, cool and careful.
And later, the still of mud, of silt. The water
caught. A dark, solid shape of water flowing
impossibly onwards.

                                    *
It may be long past, or it is here now. What may
be him, or what has slipped away, the lost other. I
long with ache for him, to feel him caught in me,
for him to pierce me, slide deep into me. It may
not be, though we fight to get close, his penis
thrusting repeatedly into me, hard as night. We
swim closer to the source, only to be drawn away
by deep tidal inconstancies, pulled by the moon
back to where we came from. Fighting a return,
we are hurled against rock, which threatens to
break, but pushes us instead back into the waves.
We can smell the air, gulp greedy lungfuls of it,
but we can never hold it in us, and sigh it out with
teeth gritted against the loss.

                                  *
The scent comes again, borne on the wind that
waves the curtains around the bed. I cannot tell
where the wind is coming from; the drapes over
the windows are still. It teases the hair on my skin,
stroking my eyebrows, trailing over my lashes. I
part the hair around my labia, or else it does, and
feel a lick of air, sharp as a tongue. Teasing and
withdrawing, returning unbeckoned to startle with
a shiver.

   When he lies on his stomach, the wind plays
with him too, darting around the hair of his shoul-
ders. I hover my hand above this hair, willing it
upwards to touch my palm, but the wind slides
between us, feathering both my palm and his hair.

   When he moves, the wind retreats, only to
return when his breath has settled back into a
steady rhythm. It toys with him, extending flirting
fingers that move with a grace greater than mine.

                                   *
From outside, the sound of quiet, soft steps, the
swish of heavy cloth, muted whispers. By night
the crackle of torches, the splash of water arcing
from jug to dish, and the sound that moves us
more than any other, that becomes our own
breath, melting against the wind, heavy with our
exertions - the sound of the Nile.

                                  *
I pinch him hard and watch the deep blue blood
flood back under the skin, feeling the hurt in my
arm. We do not speak of it, but I know that he
feels it as much as I do, keen as a blade. I take his
penis in my hand, mouthing him, undoing him.

   When it is slick with my spit, he says he wants
to be inside me, but I shake my head. Pushing him
down on the bed, my hand heavy on his chest,
taking his breath away, I pull hard at the base of
his penis, stretch open the dead eye at the tip, and
enter him with my clitoris.

                                  *
The river - winding and limitless - laps the banks
with slow, undulating strokes; but its heart is
relentless: dark water currents beneath can drag
the strongest swimmer to his death. The twisting
water is thick with slime and rich with soil, heavier
than the blood that flows in us, and in the day,
heated by the sun, it burns hotter than freshly
spilt blood. At night, under the eye of the moon,
it runs colder than the water in my veins.

   In a good season, the water gives life, lending
strength to the crops and rewarding the men with
fish. But it can also swell its banks, breaking free
to consume men and crop alike, sweeping into
homes, dragging all with it, enfolding them into
its dark heart, greater and more quiet than the
black wash that closes over one’s head.

   There are moments, the water swiftly rising,
when one can stand as close to the sides as one
dares - looking into the teasing current that could
swallow you whole - and glimpse the blackness
that is the heart of the river, a cracked mirror of
one’s face, the moment when one begins to ques-
tion why we live and die by the rhythms of the
river, the serpent that nourishes and unpeoples,
and if these thoughts are not those of one who is
already dead, dreaming that one is still gazing
down into the wine-dark waves.

                                  *
He laps at my lips with his tongue, moving about
in small, ever increasing circles. He thrusts the tip
inside and I feel myself resist, then acquiesce to
the invasion, like an amorous pinch that stings,
but is longed for. He licks the beads of moisture
that have formed, pausing to tell me they are as
the morning dew, but I know they are not. And
then I feel the swell in me, and push his head
between my legs, gushing forth the salt tainted
stream into his mouth, his eyes widening puddles
of surprise. I feel the silt and the slime flowing
from me to him, and he swallows in great gulps,
but the force is too great, splashing past his
cheeks, overflowing the measure of us both.

                                    *
He watches me as the wind glides over my stomach
and then my breasts, flicking at the tips of my
nipples, places his tongue has been. I shudder, and
with that memory, his mouth is again on mine.

                                    *
Our breath comes in ragged waves, in waste, comp-
eting with the sighs of the wind. We have grown
urgent in our touches, insistent with attempts to
reach the space that swims ever out of reach. His
finger, once inserted gently into my vagina, is
hard and probing, and he swivels his thumb into
my anus, pinching the two together, jabbing in
and out, twisting and rocking back and forth until
I feel myself tear. He continues the motion, heed-
less of the warm red that melts down his hand
and I push myself forward, urging him on, want-
ing him deeper inside me.

   I jab fingers into his mouth, lock them around
his tongue and push until he gags, yet he contin-
ues to sustain the motion with his hand, clamped
between the muscles which grip, repelling and
inviting.

                                 *
It is as mandragora - that claims one for sleep,
dragging one down into the infinite depths - I
dream of the Nile.

   When I surface, he is watching me, but it is as
if he is leagues away, swimming closer with his
gaze, never near enough to see me, like straining
after stars with the length of his arm. I tell him of
my dream, hearing my voice still dark with sleep;
he tells me he has also dreamt of the Nile. But he
finds no words, and I understand: My dream, too,
is made of water, and unfathomable.

                                   *
There was a time when we knew words, when we
remembered past this chamber. Eternity lingered
in our eyes and lips, framed on our brows, we
tasted the lotus on each other’s mouths.

   There are immortal longings in us.

                                 *
It comes as a shock, realizing that the Nile emp-
ties into the sea, and continues, mingled and
cloaked, but undiluted, that there is no end. That
what they strain after is nothing more than what
they have strained against, indistinct and
unknowable, as water is in water.

                                  *
I wake, and feel a tear or a bead of sweat prick-
ing my cheek, and I think of him in me. But only
the dark swirls around me. If he were I, if we were
a length of rope with two heads, I would feel his
knit with me. I would know him as I know myself,
doubled over, twisted and bound. He is not here,
not I. In this night, with these dreams of water, I
have been washed clean and made ready.

   Eros has called him away, and I must soon
follow.