Clare Pollard
The Day Amy Died
The Day Amy Died
After Frank O’Hara
It was a Saturday in July 2011. Coffee and papers,
which is usually a treat but there’d been this shooting
in Norway. Did you hear about that, even?
Then the pub, where I heard about you.
Ash had run the Race for Life and I was five ciders down.
A woman came at 16.30 and said:
‘Amy Winehouse is dead’,
and everyone at every table checked phones or Blackberries,
BBC or Twitter; muttering ‘tragic’
and ‘her dad doesn’t know yet’,
and the skin on my face went very chill and tight,
and it was a warm Dalston night–
you could see the Gherkin and hipsters eating
Turkish chopped-salads and a girl in vintage polka-dots,
black kids, Tesco full of lesbians –
and when Rich and I took a back-route, smoking weed,
looking at the pavement and sky, I was feeling my
blood. I was thinking of you and if it’s better to live
to 27 than never live,
and then at Luke and Suzi’s we said ‘tragic’ and
they fed me curry and, okay, more wine,
and when I came back, 00.30, I couldn’t help logging in
to look and it said 92 feared dead now in Norway and
all over facebook there were links to your videos –
your stopped face, but we could press play
and you’d jerk to life: tiny, feral, your arms
vandalised like toilet cubicles. Our cartoon.
Underneath they’d written OMG and tragic and like Janis
or like Billie and stupid selfish overrated bitch
and it’s easy to say that shit is inevitable,
but I won’t, Amy.
I won’t.