Trouble Came to the Turnip E-Book

Caroline Bird

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Following Looking Through Letterboxes, her first collection (2002), Caroline Bird was acclaimed as a vivid and precocious new talent. Trouble Came to the Turnip confirms her originality as she strikes out again in new directions, taking nothing for granted. Her poems are ferociously vital, fantastical, sometimes violent, almost always savagely humorous and self-mocking. Caroline Bird's world is inhabited by failed and (less often) successful relationships, by the dizzying crisis of early adulthood, by leprechauns and spells and Miss Pringle's seven lovely daughters waiting to spring out of a cardboard cake. And the turnip.

Leseprobe

CAROLINE BIRD

Trouble Came to the Turnip

Acknowledgements

Some of the poems in this collection have previously been published in PN Review.

Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgement

Trouble Came to the Turnip

Virgin

The Money

The World is not Made for Frogs

Our Lollipop Lady

This Time Last Week

An Opera in One Act

Put Your Earmuffs on Your Eyes

Love Has Arrived

Shiny Bin

The Softness of the Morning

Relationship Dolls

Wednesday

The Leprechaun Thinks It Matters

A Gentlewoman’s Pornography

Good Friday Outside Barcelona Cathedral

My Love Made Me a Hat

Sugar Pot Shakedown

Shortfall of Water

Pumpkins

Board-Rubber Dust

Let the People Starve

Banana Milk

My Lovely Legless Acrobat

Mermaids in My Coffee

Mono

The Choirboy Brothers

The Fairy Is Bored with Her Garden

Sunday

Chant and be Happy

Christmas Poem

Talent to Talent

The Plague

Mope

The Lady with the Lamp

Distant Dog

And a Touch of Dried Peppermint

Moving on a Midnight Train

Let’s Write Another Poem

Blue Water

Clog

It Will Come to Pass

Not Like This

Child Bride

War Poem

Old Friends

Facial

Concert Tour

A Seasonal Surprise for Miss Pringle

Meat

This Bar Is Full of Octopuses

Presents

The Mistress of the House

Not a Raindrop

Mary-Jane

Extracts from an Archive Recently Discovered in a School Wastepaper Bin

It’s True

Then

Full House

Where is all the Mist?

Ode to a Cubicle

I Fell in Love with a Crooner

City Bed

Chaining Bikes To This Girl Is Strictly Prohibited

A Bewitchment to Revive a Lustreless Relationship.

Remains

You Had a Latin Lesson.

All Things Yellow

A Sunny Day on Earth

Ahhhhhhh

Credits

Bathtub Spider

Bread

About the Author

Also by Caroline Bird from Carcanet Press

Copyright

Trouble Came to the Turnip

When trouble came to the village,

I put my love in the cabbage-cart

and we rode, wrapped in cabbage,

to the capital.

When trouble came to the capital,

I put my love in the sewage pipe,

and we swam, wrapped in sewage,

to the sea.

When trouble came to the sea,

I put my love inside a fish

and we flitted, wrapped in fish,

to the island.

When trouble came to the island

I put my love on a pirate ship

and we squirmed, wrapped in pirate,

to the nunnery.

When trouble came to the nunnery,

I put my love inside a prayer book

and we repented, wrapped in prayer,

to the prison.

When trouble came to the prison,

I put my love on a spoon

and we balanced, wrapped in mirror,

to the soup.

When trouble came to the soup,

I put my love inside a stranger

and we gritted, wrapped in mouth

to the madhouse.

When trouble came to the madhouse,

I put my love on a feather

and we flapped, wrapped in feather,

to the fair.

When trouble came to the fair,

I put my love inside a rat,

and we plagued, wrapped in rat,

to the village.

When trouble came to the village,

I put my love in the turnip-lorry

and we sneaked, wrapped in turnip,

a hurried kiss.

Virgin

If I was a virgin I could streak across your garden,

drape myself across your armchair like a portrait of a lady

who is unabashed and simple as a cherry in a bowl

and only dreams of ponies and weekends by the seaside,

sipping unchartered water from a baby-blue decanter,

sighing with her slender throat and saving herself.

If I was a virgin I could wear white in winter,

read your dirty magazines with a shy and puzzled look,

like I didn’t know a crotch from a coffee-table, darling

I could scream blue bloody murder

when you caught me in the shower,

snatch a towel around my outraged breast,

my eyes awash with droplet tears.

I wouldn’t hold your hand in public, if I was a virgin,

I would never spill spaghetti on my jeans.

My voice would be as gentle as an angel blowing bubbles,

I would be terrified by frisbees and sports of any kind,

I would always ride my bicycle side-saddle.

If I was a virgin I’d look great in a bikini.

I’d feed you grapes and rye bread

and my hands would smell of soap.

You would hold me in your arms like a precious piece of crockery,

I would sob into your jacket, you would gasp inside your pants.

If I was a virgin, you wouldn’t look at other girls,

you would spring-clean your apartment

before you asked me round for supper,

give me your bed, spend the night on the sofa,

dreaming of the gentle way I breathed inside my bra,

my nightgown would remind you of fragrant summer orchards,

and nobody would know my mouth tastes of peaches

and I thrash in my sleep like a baboon.

The Money

The money took a nosedive,

the money packed her ‘Herbal Essence’ shampoo

and headed for the city,

the money sang ‘The streets are alive

with the sound of barcodes.’

The money wore a floaty dress,

she liked to wrap the ribbons round her fist.

The money was loved by many tall men,

read hardback books, carted the kisses

blown to her by beige boys,

to the bank.

The money bought herself a pig

and fed it metal coins.

The money had friends with mint-blue jackets,

they would play pontoon

with golden match-sticks,

the money joked ‘Winning isn’t everything’

and every tonsil in the room vibrated.

The money had champagne mouthwash,

she cried into her silver soup.

One day the money ran out.

We no longer rustled on our way to work,

no longer paid our dues

with handwritten cheques, we fell

for the money and the money fell.

The money never called us by our names.

The World is not Made for Frogs

The sun crawled up on a restless frog,

cuts on her feet and salt in her shoes,

the pond was bigger yesterday,

now she’s sick of green, longing for hair,

dreaming of libraries, sofas made of slippers,

somewhere to dry herself off.

The sex has been crippling, lily-pad hopping,

she is permanently needing the toilet,

last night she put her head inside a condom,

looking for anywhere new to put her tongue,

every lover she meets has a different slime.

She wants to be a pig, to feel the flab, to weigh herself down,

stop spawning in the long grass, legs like noodles.

Once, she fell in love with a plastic bag,

it billowed and grunted and promised her salvation,

then spun into the ether with a bus timetable.

Sometimes she eats her own tadpoles,

because the world is not made for frogs,

she’s never caught a stick in her mouth,

she’s not a whale.

Our Lollipop Lady

Darling, we need a lollipop lady.

She should be old and fat,

she should have a face like a boot,

she should solve all our problems

just by standing between us

with a big, fluorescent stick.

She should tell us when to kiss,

she should tell us when to leave.

She should live in the middle of our kitchen,

in a bright yellow tent.

On bad days she might

close the kitchen altogether.

Or ban one of us.

Or frogmarch us back upstairs

to apologise.

Or frogmarch us to the bathroom

to clean ourselves up.

She should bark

and occasionally spit.

She should have a body like a tractor.

She should make us wear

neon-green reflective clothing.

This Time Last Week

Look at all the kids going off to university

and look at me going with them,

clicking my heels in the air

like a sprightly orphan,

sitting in this posh canteen

chewing fancy pasta, talking books

in a room full of children

always ready for a quiz.

‘Quiz me on sixteenth-century literature.’

‘Quiz me on Keats and Shelley and everyone.’

‘Quiz me until I scream with pain, I love it, quiz me, quiz me,

please god, yes yes, that’s it, right there, quiz me on Chaucer!!’

I want to write.

I want to be respected.

I want to be a respected writer.

I want to meet people who will inspire me

to write letters to them when I’m forty

saying ‘Thanks for inspiring me.’

But who are these people

in their ironed shirts and their reading glasses

and their well-funded quests?

Are you kidding me with this?

Where’s the shining baton

that we’re supposed to be passing around

in some meaningful relay race

in which only the weak will fall

and the strong will grow six legs