Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy in her thirties
Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including "The Ekphrastic World," edited by Lorette Luzajic, "The Plague Papers," edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, the Blue Heron Review, and Verse Virtual. Her poetry collection, “How to Become Invisible,” will be published by Kelsay Books in 2024.
Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson
I had been a fan of Mary McCarthy’s poetry for years before we met on Verse-Virtual in 2020. I was blown away by her powerful stories in verse. We bonded because we both write true narrative poems about our lives. She wrote a blurb for one of my poetry books and reviews for two others.
Mary isn’t afraid to write about subjects we were raised not to discuss: child abuse, assault, attempted rape, cancer and death. In these poems I’ve loved over the years, she weaves stories not only about her life but paints accurate word portraits of relatives so that we feel we know them. I am proud to reprint some of her older poems that either moved me or dazzled me.
Tooth
and Nail
There was no warning
that winter morning
bright and clean as a cut.
I walked the cobbled alley
at 10 a.m. in my old
neighborhood
expecting nothing but the bus
I hoped to catch
in time for my next class.
Then came the sudden
rush of someone
running from behind
and hands brought down
hard and quick
over my mouth and eyes.
In that first breath
I thought it was a friend
surprising me
with the “guess who” game
But those hands
pulled me hard
down and back
filling me
with wild refusal
as I dragged myself up
hand over hand
on a cyclone fence
then reached up behind me
fingers clawed, stabbing
at his eyes—
and when his hands slipped
I bit them hard
surprising us
out of the clutch.
I stood and turned,
screaming,
and we stared at each other
for one long beat
before running
in opposite directions.
Later the detective said
nothing could be done,
since I was not raped or robbed
I had lost nothing
anyone could count,
but he hoped I had
“washed out my mouth
real good.”
Stunning me into silence,
alone again with nothing
but teeth and nails.
Grandfather
Grandmother
He brought her wedding diamonds across
the Atlantic in his left boot heel
They were all flawed
but beautiful enough
when he married the baker’s daughter
and they stood together
solemn and proud
unsmiling for that most important photograph
solid bodies and rough hands
uneasy in silk and lace
the delicate flowers and fine cloth
ready to evaporate like fog
leaving them behind
essential and plain as stone
standing together among the last
to wear such quiet
self possession
looking older than they could have been
in the gentle brown tints of that lost time
before the Great War
when such faces were
still possible
When
it Rained
we would sit with Grandma
in the hall with the door open
to let the sweet air in
to watch the rain
come down hard
and bounce off the sidewalk
to hear the music it made
rushing in the gutters
and sprayed into arcs
by the wheels of passing cars
to see the bright scribbles
of neon lights reflected
and refracted
shimmering up from wet streets
and through sheets of rain
in a fractured dance
with headlights, streetlights
and the sudden intermittent
flash and boom
of lightning white and yellow
sharp as the bite
of pepper on the tongue
a bolt of raw intoxication
in every breath
of bright electric air.
Great
Aunt Marie
She came down from her
garden in the fields
to meet us. At 84
still tall and elegant
as an oak
with rich black dirt
lining her hands.
She gave us cold
water and new carrots
and a roaring stream
of stories
about the people so
brown and sedate in the old photos
she spread over our laps,
introducing her fifteenth
great-grandchild
and a long-gone aunt
who took her place
in the family
by riding a goat
through the front yard
in her wedding dress—
The infant and the eccentric
parentheses for a parade
that ranged between
births, deaths, marriages,
romance, intrigue,
revenges, and the worst hurt
unpunished still,
heavy on her mind.
Like the earth she works
so many times a mother
life
comes
easy as breath to her,
and the generations follow
like a train of stars.
In
the Waiting Room
While his mother waits
the baby stares at me
with eyes wide and alert
wise and calm
as the recumbent Buddha
resting in an amplitude of grace
Long fallen from that holy wordless place
I crouch in the shadow
of my sentences
trading words like beads
on a broken abacus
like stones too round to stack
that shift and shift
loose as my thoughts
that scramble after them
failing to find sure footing
in a room where nothing’s steady
as that infant gaze
*******
In the Waiting Room first appeared in 3rd Wednesday, all the others in Verse Virtual
©2017 Mary McCarthy