NEIL MCCARTHY POETRY

A selection of poems are archived on my fictionaut page  here.
A radio interview on Poetiscpape/rare Bird radio with Rich Ferguson is  here
Other poems published online can be sampled  here.


Faith was a fibreglass kayak
 
Instinctively, hoping I would follow suit,
Seán leaned our double kayak into the swell
on the Atlantic side of Rabbit Island –
 
​two tits that we were without life jackets, being
beaten by the waves into men. If this doesn´t
kill us, I thought, Jim Kennedy will.
 
Instinctively, I started singing Billy Ray was
a preacher´s son, or any other songs I could
remember from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.
 
Seán followed suit, and between large spits of
salt water and it was a teenage wedding but the
old folks wished them well, we both
 
saw a lone figure standing on a cliff on the Atlantic
side of Rabbit Island, staring at us. I thought
I saw him bless himself. I might be wrong.
 
That much I know is true. What happened next
might be the last 25 years of my imagination                   
exploring different endings to this memory.
 
Let´s resume and assume for the sake of the story
that I did, in fact, sit for a pint in Connolly´s of Leap
later that night with a Myross Wood priest.
 
I’ll call him Father Con. He drank his Murphy’s
and wore a constant expression that suggested
he was waiting for the punch line to a joke.
 
And I wish I’d had one to share. I swirled the stout
around my glass and wondered how to tell him that
I had a completely different definition of faith.
 
He stole the silence and told me he´d been on the
the Atlantic side of Rabbit Island earlier when he saw
two tits in a kayak being pushed towards the rocks.
 
Whether he smiled and quietly sang Smokin´ cigarettes
and watching Captain Kangaroo as he drew the pint to
his lips, depends on how you want this story to end.      



 



New collection  "Little Empires" coming in 2021
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