If you’re going shopping today, or dancing tonight, Elaine Cosgrove has a word or two for you:

Rude Power Quartet

Some College girls,
wanting to be
Carrie Bs or
Cheryl Cs
catwalk past the yellow statue.

With make-up applied in thick licks,
lips sunk in long tokes,
hair pokered with hot strokes,
car keys, music players adorning their hands,
headphones jewelling their ears;
they are a fashion magazine’s show
of interest staggering in heels.

They are nine-to-five fledglings
and tarts by midnight
singing to Beyonce, and J.T.
They are handbag territorial
throwing tepid looks
and sharp elbows
bouncing patchy tans baking
in the lights, the last gulp
of vodka tonic does it to
bash you out of the way,
to spill their guts in the toilet,
to cry a river, Lord.

Retail Work
is populated with some customers
from a graveyard for manners:
Those who ignore the simple task
to say please,
to say thank you,
to get off the phone.
Those who aren’t bothered
to make a small minute
to be polite,
to reply to service prompts,
to act less contemptuous
when you ask if they need a bag,
to stop putting up the sign:
‘Dare you disturb me, you die’.

But it’s always going to be grabs of the arm
and stress claws at Christmas.
They want you then, they need you now
with flushed faces
straight out of the graveyard
having left it all too late.
They call you names of all sorts
when you’re out stock, moaning
they have to take their anguish to
the next girl, the next boy, the next shop
and accuse you of being rude because
you’re silently refusing to pander
to their needs, for leaving it all too late.

At some ‘Punk’ gigs,
there’s no point in asking
you’ll get no reply.

Got to get to the club
got to see the latest show
got to boycott coke
got to put it up your nose.
Big brands bad brands:
guilt suspended.

Capitalism equals Murder
but you would kill for a pint
to pose with a fist
wrapped ‘round a permanent marker
to make big brands, bad brands
into scrawls on a wall across from the hall
teething ‘A’s at the petrol pumps
aged eighteen.

Adopting oi! tones to add effect
to the theory that it’s all against the System,
Right? Turning out what-you-lookin-ats
right in the face
right in the head

And we get it.
You know all the moves, punk;
you’ve seen This is England
aged eighteen.

Hanging (no choice) at the Dole,
the woman with the lovely voice says,
‘Number two hundred and fifty five
please go to counter number three.’

I am tying bows with sums from a red-ribboned welfare,
a numerical democracy chugging on low power
after the cuts update.
On computer after computer,
figures and facts are punched
in and out in and out

And supposedly I am not a Prisoner;
I am 60% means-tested
with 40% free
in an economy of people
graphed on the fact
of dependency
on probability,
eligibility.

Well, I said in the back of my mind
I am a not a statistic
I am not six numbers
for a posted window-box letter,
I am real
I am a human being.

Elaine Cosgrove was born in Sligo and lives in Galway. She writes both poetry and flash fiction. In 2010, she was shortlisted for the Fish Publishing One Page Story Prize and the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Competition. At the end of last year, she published a chapbook of poems called Varnish.