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DONAL MAHONEY - POEMS

5/15/2017

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Picture
​Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, Guwahatian Magazine (India), The Galway Review (Ireland), Public Republic (Bulgaria), The Osprey Review (Wales), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey) and other magazines. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs


                   Breakfast with Ted



No one goes to the patio now  
except at night when Ann
goes out to spread old bread 
and sunflower seed
on the small table for birds 
to eat at dawn.

The next morning
she gets up early and
watches the birds from 
the breakfast nook
where she and Ted
would sit and marvel  
at the pecking order.

First the sparrows arrive 
and eat as fast as possible
before the cardinals and jays
come and take command.
Then the starlings land 
and raise a ruckus 
even when the table
is theirs alone.

The starlings leave
like jets on a mission and 
in just a few minutes 
two doves drop down.
One walks behind the other 
and they eat whatever 
is left behind.

It’s no wonder Ann’s partial
to one of the doves. 
He reminds her of Ted
and lets the other dove 
walk ahead and eat
the best of what is left. 
His feathers are always 
perfectly in place, same 
color as Ted’s hair.




                 Drumstick and Thigh


Young Tim goes to Zaire 
to write his dissertation
in African Studies.

While there he meets and 
marries a beautiful librarian 
darker than he is, flies her 

home to meet the family.
Tim's father asks his mother  
if she knew about Margot.

Mother says she didn’t 
but she’s not surprised. 
On Thanksgiving Day  

Tim likes the dark meat,
the biggest and meatiest 
drumstick and thigh.




           Confetti Waiting for a Parade



As autumn turns colder
there’s only one moth   
fluttering at midnight

around the porch light.
He’s the last of the flock 
that danced all summer

in the glow of the night.
Confetti that never fell 
on a holiday parade.




                  A Bride for Mr. Fenster



Three sisters
single in their 40s 
gather 'round the fire

on a night of thunder  
to figure out which sister
should marry Mr. Fenster, 

a widower in his 90s now. 
He proposed last week to 
all three of them and said

he would marry one
and provide a nice home
for the other two.

Mr. Fenster owns a farm
down the road a mile or so. 
Worth a lot of money

he buried a wife a year ago.
He's mourned enough, he says,  
and wants to marry a nice lady 

who will make him happy.
Mabel and Maude say Millie 
should be the bride. 

After all, she's the youngest 
of the three, can cook and clean 
and is young enough  

and strong enough to lift 
Mr. Fenster on and off.
Millie says no way.




                Biker at the Drugstore


It’s a very busy drug store
with seats along the wall
where folks who wait for refills
sit and sometimes chat
but as I discover you can 
leave the store worse off  
than when you walk in.

The fellow next to me's 
a biker as his attire says,
a red bandana around his head 
a black leather jacket with  
zippers dashing everywhere.

I’ve never met a biker 
but everything is fine until 
he presses something in his neck
and says his vocal chords 
were harvested by cancer. 

I lie and say I understand 
but then he adds he's been told 
he now has liver cancer.
He’s picking up some meds 
he hopes will let him live.
The doctor says six months.
Again I lie and say I understand 
but who am I to understand.
I’ve never had cancer.
 
I tell my wife later, next to
marrying her, the smartest thing
I’ve ever done was quit two packs   
a day and vodka straight 
no chaser on the weekends.
That was 50 years ago.
She says marrying her was 
nowhere near the smartest thing.
Quitting all that stuff was better.
I suspect my biker friend
if he had another chance 
at life would join me.


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