Get this! Hopelessly unthinking about the barbarity and injustice of state executions, we have a “pop-up restaurant” themed as “death row dinners”. Pass the sick bag.
May I invite you to my cell to dine?
Is this the final meal that you will face?
It’s Hoxton’s newest, sickest hipster line
For those about to die salute your taste
Sit down in your unplugged electric chair
There’s extra seats for people black or poor
Our bar sells lethal shots and grilled despair
Please give your racial profile at the door
Come join the fun, you hipster boys and gals
Try innocents condemned with clotted cream
We don’t suppose you’re counting kilo-cals
That really wouldn’t fit in with the theme
— At fifty quid, it’s cheap at twice the price
— It’s pop-up cos you sure can’t eat here twice
This poem was published on Poetry 24, the website which posts a daily news-related poem, on 17 September 2014.
In its Sunday Review for that week, Poetry 24 described it as “a clever and telling sonnet written in response to the opening in Hoxton of a ‘death row’ themed restaurant. This is something that I find distasteful and quite bizarre. Perhaps I am missing something here.”
