Crocks
i.m. Reg and Win Bradley

Deep dish pies with pastry stretched over domes
of stewed gooseberries, Kilner jars of plums
suspended in pale fluid, towers of tins,
bags of flour and sugar. On the highest
shelf, a marriage’s worth of crockery.

Tucked beneath the counter of the pantry,
a tiny larder fridge, packed with butter,
milk, bacon, sausages, for our visit,
the dates ringed on the calendar.

Reg helped in Win’s kitchen when he retired,
pea-podding, bean-stripping, washing dishes.
‘Men don’t wash the pots nicely,’ she’d whispered,
inspecting plates as we cleared the drainer.

I held my tongue during tirades
against benefits scroungers:
in stereo when Reg and Win
got bees in their bonnets;
solo after he’d gone.

I remember the day the shelf collapsed,
the crash of crocks as the bracket released,
the painted wood sloping from high to low
in a way that Reg would never have tolerated.

Broken shards of Indian tree platters,
tureens, gravy boats, creamers, in a mess
of dried goods on the oblong of vinyl
flooring that Reg had laid the year before.

His gardening coat and deerstalker hat
hung still on their hook by the back door,
as if he would rise from the table,
put on his boots and go digging.

Maria C. McCarthy
First published in The Frogmore Papers, 2017

Ghost writer
(in memory of John Trelawny)

You were slimmer, yes, and smaller
and your guttural growl restored
to before the cancer stole
the plums from your voice.

But then you were dead, in this dream,
returned to work on a piece of writing,
leaving its completion
to Nick Hornby and me.

I wouldn’t have been your choice,
and Nick Hornby unlikely –
you would choose a writer of seafaring yarns,
smugglers stories – but dreams have their own rules.

You were once told by our tutor
that you were a writer of popular
fiction, whilst I aspire to the literary,
working and reworking.

You wrote reams each week,
self-published, marketed,
sold and moved on. But now
you want me to edit your oeuvre.

Nick Hornby sits silently
throughout your visitation,
then half-smiles and stretches his arms,
his hands spaced the length,

breadth and depth of a box,
not visible, substantial,
and he lays the gift at my feet:
the secrets to completing

another man’s work;
the secrets, in fact,
of writing.

Nick Hornby nods,
leaves, and you dissolve,
John. I am left with the box.

It’s hard, the writing,
the rewriting,
the carrying on.

Maria McCarthy
First published in strange fruits by Maria C. McCarthy, 2011

Uncles
i.m. Karan Bucknall

Your Uncle Jack is at the wake.
He’s telling stories
of my Uncle Jerry,
back in the sixties,
fresh from County Clare
to look for work.

Jerry’s gone, too.
More years he had,
my friend, than you.

‘I’ll always be six months younger,’
my annual joke repeated on each of your birthdays.
Now I’ll outrun you, come September,
in a way I never could in the races at school.

Jack’s mouth crumples, crooked streams meander
through his work-tanned wrinkles. An unfamiliar
sight in an old Irish workhorse out to pasture.

But now he’s laughing, picturing Jerry,
his hair dyed black and quiffed like Elvis.
entering the dancehall, hands on hips,
as if to say, ‘Come on girls, come and get me.’

First published in Confluence, 2021

For John
The final whistle blows:
no extra time,
no penalties to settle scores.

No one knows when the last match will be called,
when your name will move from the starting eleven
to the subs bench, to the roll of honour.

In memory of my brother, John McCarthy, 24 June 1955 – 28 December 2023

Maria C. McCarthy. Author photo by Janice McGuinness

Maria C. McCarthy is a winner of the Society of Authors’ Tom-Gallon Trust Award. She writes poems, stories and memoir, has published three of her own books, and edited many others. She is contributing editor, with SM Jenkin, of Inspired by Six Women who Shook the World (Medway Libraries, 2023) www.medwaymaria.co.uk

Poem written by one of our members, Patricia Preece

How do I cope with the grief,
The pain,
The loss,
That giant black hole of nothing left?

Tears never far away,
Emotion exploding,
Sobs, silent or loud,
Shaking my heart, my soul.

Breath taken away.
Hope gone.
Reality of emptiness.
Joy a lost memory.

Acceptance
that someone’s life
has run it’s course.
They have moved on.

The dead do not wait for us
Either they lay in a
peaceful eternity –
Or face a new existence.

When we cry
Who are we crying for?
We cry for us.
In pain, lost.

Sadness crushes us.
Daylight and darkness
Are one and the same,
Meaningless.

Letting go is hard,
Of those we loved,
The dreams of the future
Gone, fights forgotten.

Our lives continue.
We are destined
To be alone
In grief.

Life will enfold us.
Holding us,
Until the tears cease.
And we can breathe again.