Poetry

After a Reading by Simon Armitage

En’terrace

hoisted onto the apostrophe

a moment hovers,

hanging, like his hair,

over his face.

Poem

a child’s mouth round the ‘o’

sounding it no bigger than a polo.

Snug

stretching round in an embrace of itself.

When he speaks, I see

The thick grey sky, belly sagging

Between spindle-tips of trees.

Worn into words it is woven, weighty,

The snag of gritstone on skin

The resonant stomp of peat.

I wonder whether, if sawing

A leg or a torso right through

Would yield a ring of pink on white;

The word ‘Yorkshire’.

Johanna Hateley