Jaqui Rowe
Come to Mock, Stay for the Chocolate
We line dance in the Mushing Suite,
to an Ulsterwoman singing about Mayo.
The girls,
with glitter hair flowers on their wrists, force
people into steps. There’s no music
I don’t like, I say
to pass the time, except the music I don’t like.
All the country and western
which isn’t Patsy Cline. Steps. Strauss on
New Year’s Morning in the bungalow
in Bournemouth. Brass bands. Simultaneously
sharp and flat
male voices. Anything
with Penzance or pinafore
in its name.
Then, tonight, she says,
I’m going to be Lurleen Lumpkin again
and the girls
without their shoes on
chase the Devil’s red-eyed herd.
I do metacognition, modelling
grapevine, stomp, Charlie Brown, trying
to be always behind and with the beats,
going on until they draw the raffle for Rumania.
Alex wins Roses.
Page(s) 59
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The