Poetry by Bethan Jones

            ​Pablo Romeo CC



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Cadair Captain

When my grandparents died – 18 months apart 
my sister inherited my grandad’s captain’s chair.

I took the three piece suite, soft grey with velvet
fabric that I’d smoothed over and over again 

as I hung upside down, reading, when we visited every Wednesday.

I had a house to furnish; my sister simply rented
an old, converted stable too small for her, her boyfriend and their dog.

But she kept my grandad’s captain’s chair in the kitchen,
the same room it lived in when my grandad was alive

and we grew from babies strapped in with sheer brown tights to teenage girls.

We all sat there, at different times, me, my mam, my uncles.
gran and grandad, family friends, wrapped in the warmth

of the aga and the steaming kettle and the smell
of currants as my gran made Welsh cakes on the hob

and talked about our days, the books we read, who’d been born, married and died.

I bought a new three piece suite, donated the old one
with its faded cushions and patched up arms.

My sister, her boyfriend and their dog have
their own house now, the chair used daily in the living room.

Its polished seat, faded and worn through years of use, sometimes catches the sun and gleams.






Before the wake

We sat in the kitchen perched 
on chairs 
and table 
and the thin wooden windowsill 
when the funeral director took my gran away. 

We avoided looking at the living room, 
the rise and fall of the glass-paned-door which turned the 
dark draped men and 
shrouded body into Monet ripples
 moving in another time. 

We sat in the kitchen and breathed in gran, 
the faint scent of Welsh cakes, sugar bells 
on Christmas cake, toffee boiled in a saucepan on the stove. 

The chair where my grandad sat she tied me into, 
with an old pair of tights, 
when I was two 
so she could cook and bake and watch me at the same time. 

The table my sister leaned against the same one she kneeled at 
mixing flour, eggs and  sugar 
and licking the spoon clean when she thought gran wasn’t looking.

We began to talk 
to hide the noises coming beyond the door, 
the muffled thuds 
and mutters 
of furniture being moved and directions being given. 

Of the time my mother was small
and balanced on the edge 
of the bridge 
over the road 
when the neighbour saw and threatened to tell. 

Of the time my gran 
got high 
from the eighth of hash my uncle brought 
to help ease her arthritis 
and saw the ghost of my grandad walking through the living room 
while he sat beside her on the settee.

We sat 
and stood 
and leaned
and rocked with laughter while the tears 
ran down our cheeks, 

until the thuds and mutters stopped 
in the next room and the funeral director opened the door and gazed at our smiles.
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Bethan Jones is an academic, a flash fiction writer and a poet from south Wales. Her academic work, which primarily focuses on anti-fandom and digital dislike, has been published in Sexualities, New Media & Society and the Journal of Fandom Studies and she is co-editor of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society. Bethan is a former Beacons Project and Cinemagic participant and received her MA in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing from Cardiff University. Her creative work has been featured in The Binnacle and The Pygymy Giant.

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