Neil McCarthy


The Day I Nearly Killed Donal Reagan

with the Bucket of a JCB


The day I nearly killed Donal Reagan with the bucket of a JCB 

had actually started well – a 7am cycle through Myross Wood,

out past Rineen at full tide, trees electric with waking birds, 

tractors dieseling along the lanes to a creamery on its last legs; 

hedgerows thick with that baited combination of 

nettles and blackberries, honeysuckle and briars; a spangle of

spiderwebs glistening in the dew, stitching them all together.

Then and there, the first measure of a real man was the ability to run a loaded 

wheelbarrow up a plank of wood into the back of a trailer. 

Not easily forgotten are Donal Reagan’s eyes 

when the teeth of the bucket of the JCB I was driving 

came through the cab window of the digger he 

was sitting in. All eighteen years of me trying to prove 

I had more to offer the world than a wheelbarrow and a plank.

If I quarry deep enough, I can still find a younger version of myself 

in a broken pair of boots, ripped jeans, cut hands, shaking on a bed of 

slate; doing his best to drown out the sounds of engines growling, 

glass cracking, steel scraping off of steel, listening instead to the 

call of a corncrake in the adjacent field announcing his departure.


Peter God

From the off, let me state for the record his name was James.

–       How are you today, James?

–       Ah sure I´m fine, thanks Peter God.

(Nicknames were nailed to your back where I come from) 

James commanded the far corner of the bar like a general

surveying his infantry. Customers came and went, saluting.

Fuckle was another favourite of his.

One day my father took him a live lobster as a thank you for

a job he’d done on a car we had – a death trap. Held together

by bailing twine and Hail Marys.

–   Fuckle I do with that? said James furrowing his brow.

Apparently, he waited until we’d driven off, thwacked it

with a block of wood and lobbed it over the sea wall, RIP.

Took us all a few months of James telling us he didn’t have

a Toyota until some tower of hope suggested he meant iota.

Those who laughed weren’t sure who they were laughing at –

Tom Thumb, pint-from-halfway-down-the-barrel, tulip glass;

Cidona Willy, Carlsberg Steve, Noel 5-Day-Forecast;

Mary Brandy-and-ginger-no-fuckin’-ice.

–   Twill be fine and dry for the week, James, offered Noel.

–       Oh, it will indeed, thanks Peter God!

The unbaptized slipped under the radar, only the click of the

door closing itself alerting us to their departure.

The loud ones, the no-homes-to-go-to crew, patted

themselves down religiously before leaving – sang goodbye a

dozen times, holding onto the door like a windsurfer to his boom –

an invitation to twist their arm, to buy a pint of their company.

–   Is it coming or going you are, James?

–   I don’t have a Toyota, Mary.

So, will you have one more?-   Sure, I will. I will, sure. I will.


Neil McCarthy is a poet from West Cork. His first collection – Stopgap Grace – was published by Salmon Poetry in 2018 and subsequently shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award. He now lives in California.