Rob A Mackenzie gets musical for our second poem from the 16 August Fruitmarket readers:
Top of the Pops, backing tracks battle with vocal autotune,
emerge as helium monotone: DJ Corporate’s Legless Crew
remix ‘Bores on 45’ and for the ninety-fifth week running
Yo La Tengo are non-movers at number two, above them
an unstable hegemony of blandness – lyrics powered by
the world’s seventh most desirable siren – kerb-crawling
easy slopes to glorified skidmark which, once achieved,
is archived as apocryphal spam, doggerel Gospel according
to the Winehouse, epistle to cabbage, prophetic retro,
last acts of dogged, apocalyptic rockabilly. Oh thank you,
Ira, Georgia, James, thank you, thank you for raiding
sugar for blood, the stock-in-trade for shock hallelujahs.
Rob A. Mackenzie is from Glasgow and lives in Edinburgh. His first full poetry collection, The Opposite of Cabbage, was published by Salt in 2009. HappenStance Press published his pamphlet, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, in 2005. He is reviews editor of Magma Poetry magazine and blogs at Surroundings.
Amy Jo Philip 
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