The Burns Supper Poem by Sheena Blackhall

You stand there, knife in your hand
Solemn’s the Last Supper,
Addressing a haggis.

Every Scot in his marrow warms to Burns,
The Ayshire Casanova who
Spoke out for Freedom, the rights of man
In straight plain language

You get to stand there in his skin
Have a piece of him, shaking your fist
The main man, against Holy Willies
Iniquities of poverty and your own
Insignificance and peelywalliness

Everyone’s got Burns taped. Number one
Of the performance poets, he lived life LARGE
He hammered verbal nails into unfairness.
Man of the people, sweat of our sweat
Our greatest export

This is your moment of glory.
The haggis awaits. Your mother sucks on her gums
You make her proud, oh aye.
Her hair is permed to perfection,
Her annual trip from the care home

Your oilman son, all hairy legs and trainers
Listens to you for once in his beer stained kilt
The power of poetry gives you borrowed importance
Outside, the North Sea storms and rails and rattles
Landlubbers pay it not one jot of attention
Its dramatic shenanigans is nothing compared
With hundreds of Tam o Shanters
Spoken this night in a show of Scots solidarity

Your son’s imported partner, a pallid Finn
Is appropriately impressed as you disembowel
With relish the steaming haggis entrails.
Your son explains this is a Scottish custom
She nods and whispers, ‘Ah, just like our sauna.’