The Friday Poem on 20/01/23
We chose ‘Escape’ by Rachel Burns to be our Friday Poem this week because we love the way the poem grabs us by the hand and drags us up to the top deck of the bus, through the toilet window, into the back row of the cinema. It lights up a fag for us and gives us a lungful of life in one particularly grim little town. It’s not exactly a hopeful poem, but there is joy in cameraderie, in shared experience, and also in the wisdom of hindsight. It’s precisely observed, deeply felt, and nicely controlled, and we like it.
Escape
Suddenly, I’ve time warped like in that German TV show
where everyone listens to cool eighties tunes on a Walkman.
I’m fifteen again, sat on the top of the double decker
with best friend, Kat. Look, we are sharing a long menthol
brown cigarette, smoking it down to the bitter end.
Here we are again, climbing through the toilet window
of Robin’s cinema, walking across the sticky foyer floor,
now sat in the back row, watching Madonna
in Desperately Seeking Susan & oh God
do we want to get out of this shitty little Catholic town
& Madonna is getting into the groove & we think that this will save us
from a life that so far has been Catholic childhood grim.
& we both fall down the same rabbit hole – swapping one life
for another one, just as dark. & the council relocate all the Catholic girls
to the same dead-end street – so later we are together,
a small blessing, sat chain smoking on the Provy man’s settee,
me hiding the shame of my pregnant swollen belly under an oversize
blue knitted jumper, watching Kat’s boy laughing
at Big Bird flapping his yellow wings on the slot rental TV.
