Poetry – Issue 8 | February 2010
Two poems by Neil McCarthy
Ecdysis
My accent stands out more and more every day,
as if I’m deliberately, yet subconsciously, over-pronouncing
my Irishisms:
- Long black witta splasha milk, sound.
- How’s the form, you’re well?
- Any crack witcha?
The tram driver just announced Federation Square the
next stop. He had an accent that suggested he was
about to say ‘Next stop Federation Square comrades’,
but he didn’t.
He could have been Polish, or Albanian.
He could have been that Bosnian Ratko Mladic.
God knows they still haven’t found him.
The other passengers, too, may well have been
foreign, looking at me as an Aussie, a Pom, a Paddy
or a Yank; our skins itching for ecdysis to reveal ourselves,
but we never opened our mouths.
About the author
Neil McCarthy has been on the run from Ireland for the best part of a decade, writing and reading, flirting and boozing in places as tourist-friendly as Bolivia, Mongolia, and Russia. He has lived in Australia, China and Finland and has had poems published in the The Dalhousie Review, New York Quarterly, and Poetry Salzburg Review, to name a few. He is currently in financial exile in Vienna, Austria, waiting to meet a rich woman with a bad cough.
Next in Poetry: Two poems by Susanna Rich
Previously in Poetry: Postcard from Texas
