Poem
Caroline Bird
Hey Las Vegas
Hey Las Vegas
Hey Las Vegas
Hey Las Vegas, can nothing save usfrom you? Hey bottle-bins and Tesco Metro,
Monday yawnings, flu symptoms, the station pub
at Waterloo. You’re all Las Vegas
and I’m hooked on you.
Hey Las Vegas, you’re a cheeky sausage,
aren’t you? Swapping my lovers while I’m under
the covers watching your tattoo change. Kisses began
in the city of sin – be it York or Durham –
die with you, Las Vegas.
Hey Las Vegas, can a Yorkshire lass match
her drinks with you? I built a bedroom casino,
bet my hotel bible and lost a week. Just one, Las Vegas,
pinch of comatose, powder up the nose
and I’m a queen for you.
Hey Las Vegas, I wore my Elvis costume
for you, a genuflect in Wetherspoons from muscle
cramp: your promise, like a flung bouquet
off Humber Bridge, to break my fall
Las Vegas, like the A63.
© 2011, Caroline Bird
Published with kind permission of the author.
Caroline Bird
(England, 1986)
Caroline Bird was born in Leeds in 1986, grew up in London, and is currently studying English Literature at Oxford University. She has published three collections with Carcanet: Looking Through Letterboxes (2002), Trouble Came To The Turnip (2006) and Watering Can (2009). Watering Can was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and she is the only writer to have been shortlisted for the Dylan Tho...
Poems
Poems of Caroline Bird
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Hey Las Vegas
Hey Las Vegas, can nothing save usfrom you? Hey bottle-bins and Tesco Metro,
Monday yawnings, flu symptoms, the station pub
at Waterloo. You’re all Las Vegas
and I’m hooked on you.
Hey Las Vegas, you’re a cheeky sausage,
aren’t you? Swapping my lovers while I’m under
the covers watching your tattoo change. Kisses began
in the city of sin – be it York or Durham –
die with you, Las Vegas.
Hey Las Vegas, can a Yorkshire lass match
her drinks with you? I built a bedroom casino,
bet my hotel bible and lost a week. Just one, Las Vegas,
pinch of comatose, powder up the nose
and I’m a queen for you.
Hey Las Vegas, I wore my Elvis costume
for you, a genuflect in Wetherspoons from muscle
cramp: your promise, like a flung bouquet
off Humber Bridge, to break my fall
Las Vegas, like the A63.
Hey Las Vegas
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