Cocktails

Bombing at about ninety miles an hour with the exhaust skittering
The skid-marked pitted tarmac of Kennedy Way, they hit the ramp and sailed
Clean over the red-and-white guillotine of the check-point and landed
On the M1 flyover, then disappeared before the Brits knew what hit them. So
The story went: we were in the Whip and Saddle bar of the Europa.

There was talk of someone who was shot nine times and lived, and someone else
Had the inside info on the Romper Room. We were trying to remember the facts
behind the Black & Decker case, when someone ordered another drink and we entered
The realm of Jabberwocks and Angels’ Wings, Widows’ Kisses, Corpse Revivers.

© Ciaran Carson, 1987, complete text, The Irish for No, 1987, The Gallery Press.

Ciaran Carson reproduces the glibness of journalists in Belfast taking in the news of a shooting incident and then telling tales about earlier atrocities before getting drunk.