McCloskey’s Fish & Chips

Grandad stopped getting

fish & chips

once they were no

longer wrapped in

newsprint, the headlines

from the night

before.

It sucked up the grease,

he croaks, kept it warm

in the wintertime,

saying nothing

of the ink

that would have seeped

into his haddock, the germs

from the pressman’s

hands, that the soap

was always gone

in those early morning

hours of the run.

It’s the only way I

ever got the news, he

notes in spotty recall,

after we’d heard the

tales of no TV, wireless, that

the London Times

was just a little pricey

for the day, a subscription

wrought in pounds—

of money and of flesh,

that he was perfectly

contented

to read of a ship which

sunk, another Ripper’s

on the loose,

of a bombing

by the IRA, as he

dipped what we call

fries in Worcestershire,

and not just loss of

life, but the races

down at Ascot,

the complex cricket

scores, the win by his

darling Ipswich

on the road in

Liverpool;

but always back to

death—Lennon’s

headline shooting,

the Diana-Dodi

crash, the obit

of an adolescent

love, who’d marooned

him at the chapel

in ‘52, neither

having funds by

which to live;

swallowing

every story with

the batter, every

inverted letter

tartar-stained,

sticking in his

foodpipe

every while,

before guzzling

down his Guinness,

feigning he loved the

taste.

Andreas Gripp

June 7, 2025

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