Poem
Chris McCabe
ABC
ABC
ABC
The ABC was our song, we’d hummed it togetherthe night we’d met. We couldn’t believe we knew it too.
Then the plastic snail came along with its Hawking recording –
we rolled him to the cat tray on his yellow wheels.
Together we sang the melodic sequins of it opening
the ups & downs of each cadence Aaa Bee Cee Dee Eee Fff Ggg
and stuck with it through the military rattle of l,m,n,o,p,
to where it begins to fall apart in Tourette’s phonetics
and never recovers. The ‘and’ between ‘Y and Z’
is an affront to the tonally deaf. It becomes like jazz
– in its aleatory nonsense – and we fuckin hated jazz.
But I loved that song, I thought it was ours.
© 2008, Chris McCabe
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Chris McCabe
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1977)
Chris McCabe was born in Liverpool in 1977, grew up there and studied for a degree in Literary Studies at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. He moved to London when he was twenty-four, and now works as a Joint Librarian at the Poetry Library on the South Bank. He has published poems in a number of places including Poetry Salzburg Review, Shearsman, Magma and Poetry Review. His f...
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Poems of Chris McCabe
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ABC
The ABC was our song, we’d hummed it togetherthe night we’d met. We couldn’t believe we knew it too.
Then the plastic snail came along with its Hawking recording –
we rolled him to the cat tray on his yellow wheels.
Together we sang the melodic sequins of it opening
the ups & downs of each cadence Aaa Bee Cee Dee Eee Fff Ggg
and stuck with it through the military rattle of l,m,n,o,p,
to where it begins to fall apart in Tourette’s phonetics
and never recovers. The ‘and’ between ‘Y and Z’
is an affront to the tonally deaf. It becomes like jazz
– in its aleatory nonsense – and we fuckin hated jazz.
But I loved that song, I thought it was ours.
ABC
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