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

Spellbound by the window, its praline cubes
towering from trays, truffle seashells
in conical castles, domes raised by cherries,
she can’t resist the melting darkness.
  Entering,

she’s immersed in the aroma of chocolate,
half expects to see a brown residue
speckling the walls and glass counter,
settles herself on plum cushions at a table.
  A gallery

of taste and smell, she tells herself.
How her tongue craves the creamy swan
ferrying a soft-centred assortment,
the burgundy fish stamped with a dance
  of scales.

The hot chocolate she orders, arrives
in a coppergold pot which could have posed
centuries ago for a Dutch still life.
With it is a wickerwork nest of mocha eggs,
  their sweetness

subtle as the filigree lace of the serviette
beneath the saucer. Putting her dipped finger
to her lips she sees the single square
from a Cadbury’s bar awarded at the end
  of a meal

and the sticky hoard she saved in a tin
when she was six to gladden her deprivation
on days the grown ups said she was bad.
The guilt she knows so well sets in.
   It’s hard

as toffee, as cement. She makes her way
to the counter which has shed its finesse. Taps
spout leaden and cow-brown liquids
which pour into halves of a goggling frog
   mould.

Now the window’s occupied by expressoblack
golf clubs, a hillock of balls
and a guitar with a pack of sugar almond
seahorses sneering behind caramelized strings.
   Outside

lovers chewing each other’s cheeks
make her body crinkle with longing.
She bites off the head of a chocolate soldier
from years ago. Its violet sickliness
   sticks

in her throat. Choking, she pushes the door
and cocoa flows over the cobbles
into the canal. Fighting fear she lifts
her edible hand, steers her porcelain cup
   to her mouth,

discovers she’s sitting opposite a face
transparent with age, smiles at the harebell
blue of the wily eyes and glimpsing
a miniature self, at last savours
   satisfaction.