berlin lit

Ellora Sutton

 

Roses 

 

I want to know more about roses.

I want to be given a rose, a yellow rose, I want to be given a rose 

by the kind of person who always carries secateurs 

and they’re giving it to me 

just because they’ve read this poem about my wanting 

to know more about roses. Their etymology. 

I want it tucked into my hair. I have no interest in hair 

apart from Kate Winslet’s hair in Titanic 

when she takes out that jewelled comb and shakes 

her hair down over her shoulders like a French girl

or her almost-boyfriend’s sketch of a French girl. 

I suppose it symbolises her emancipation 

or something. Maybe I should say 

I don’t care about roses apart from Rose in Titanic.

I’ve always felt that Titanic was a bit of a prologue. 

Like what does Rose do next? Where does she go? 

I hope she mastered spitting not like a man but like herself. 

I hope she spat herself dry. I hope she spat into many mouths

and lived long enough to play The Sims, 

to make herself and Jack on The Sims and watch him 

teach their improbably gorgeous but pixelated children to walk.

And at the very end is Old Rose dead 

in Titanic Heaven kissing Jack on the staircase

whilst her husband is up in Normal Heaven 

watching like the rest of us, thinking 

dude what the fuck? What the actual fuck?