James Roderick Burns
Trout Town, USA
As morning broke we wound out of the city like a shedding snake. Buildings peeled away, then tunnels, bridges, tankers, until we slipped into the mountains in our new green skin.
Goodbye, New York; hello foliage! Conference-bound, we cast off our suburban grime and the city’s greasy shroud to climb through miles of wide-spreading trees.
The higher we got, the more the radio’s overlapping babble and clash of contesting songs receded into static, and after a few hours, silence. Just a gentle hiss escaped the speakers; it was rather peaceful, a whisper of white noise.
The conference was a flop. Ponderous wind bags piping hot air, it dulled the senses and sent us scurrying for the tea tray or the toilets, the closing remarks and the parking lots.
But on the way back we spotted a sign: Historic Roscoe, Trout Town, USA. Holiday Resort and Anglers’ Paradise, the billboard said, and indicated its location a few miles below on the valley floor.
We couldn’t stop, but in the clean silence the words worked their magic, and for the first time all weekend, I was enchanted: imagine, a whole trout community walking round on their tails! Trout stationers, trout bankers, trout postmasters and trout mechanics; and there, behind the long marble slab, resplendent in starched apron and straw hat, a trout fishmonger, smiling over his cleaver.
Page(s) 101
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The