​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.

​1.

dulled rebirth against the
dolorous brink of insufficient sea
I wear the doeskin’s hath and hew,
hallow, ocher and waiting
– my lady’s praise left
that murmurous, murderous minstrel
in the mingled evensong beneath the
creeping breeze of the soul
master bard of her labored litany
clusters in chorister, halts, slows
hums to bleak pulse and ends
it was Spring when I first found her,
emerald and fair, sun at zenith and to
horizon it fell
the hours go sodden, the minutes as
rough and cold as molten lead brutal
in absence and heavy
I saw her months ago
some shadow , looming
and the sun never returned the same,
gone Orcus and sullen
grief, meseemeth, split from the riverbed
of all things, draws back into the
frosted soul
my maiden of the moon, Selene, some wolf
has come here with nothing on the mind
but blood and death’s sad self most sweet
dawn speaks with foreflame,
paw,
begging
shedding light on the massacre of
misunderstanding



2.

​moonglow , astonished ,
washes the marsh from
north to south
interpose,
sickle the loneliness
for another era
all this foul distance
you and I inhabit
irrevocable


3.

rasp and sheer
of the morning
the atoms,
the handshaped stain
rises, the sun with his
red armful of arrows
blue hue and exact,
this hard remembering
uniquely desolate,
wolf, whose sleep I have
stolen in my vague
graceful hinges
we are like children who
wade the river and forget
still as a luxury


4.

beneath the architectured veil,
frost and rue work their way to
the earth’s surface
coming
to find me
murderous as Medeia, the mute
sharp wild knife she sharpens
for my slaughter
fragment of the moonglow’s substance
she is frightened by her own voice
and the staggering lengths
of story
Pan is in the fir trees, unthinkable
caught in pine filth and obsolete dark
gone old and dead long ago
in great quantities later to be
crushed from our burden
night scythes the head of this
forest’s warden, whose every hundred
eyes cave beneath this
slumbering feeling of our fall
along her various edges, oblivion,
oblivious and audible
fog condensed into black water
on the hardened forewings of this valley,
snapping into courtship
now you, now you


5.

moon a frail cold bit of
silver gristle low in the
fading dark of sky
over the lower garden,
night has left us in
vehemence
moon, air, dawn
exasperated , rasp,
cinder
the frail facts fall
and what I wish for
is clarity, but instead
I become merciless
brazen into the flat,
coalesced horizon

​

​Anoucheka Gangabissoon is a Primary School Educator in Mauritius.  She writes poetry and short stories as hobby.  She considers writing to be the meaning of her life as she has always been influenced by all the great writers and wishes to be, like them, immortalized in her words.  Her works can be read on poetrysoup.com and she had also appeared in various literary magazines like SETU, Different Truths, Dissident Voice.  She has also been published in Duane’s Poetree and also in an anthology for the Immagine and Poesia group.  Her poems are often placed in free online contests.

 
                                     On those starry nights
 

Starry nights
Moonlit
Invaded by fireflies
Gleaming with an other worldly aura
Pray,
Fresh chills
Prick my flesh
And I, lightly dressed
Can only close my eyes
In sweet submissive exalt!
 
Why, love is so beautiful
Love, eternal and pure
Love, mystical and mysterious
Love, filling up my whole essence
Love, being that which drives me
Which invigorates me
Which pulls out my hidden side
And which fills me with pride!
 
Yes, those nights are starry for a cause
And that is immersing us all in their beauty
To the extent of mesmerizing us
And hypnotizing us
Bidding us, while they are at it
To accept life
And to fall in love with its whims!
 
Into the night air
I do allow my whole being to be immersed
Into the night air
I do allow my whole being to lose its mortal nature
Why,
The images weave themselves
Someday, I shall be the chirping of grasshoppers at night
I shall even be the gurgle of water as it flows
Why, I shall be the engulfing silence
And even the power which allows night creatures to become night rulers!
Why, someday
I shall be the reason why lovers love the night!
 
Pray, starry nights
Dreaming, dreaming
Carefree and totally immersed in amorous ties with life!
 
 
  
 
                           The havoc inhabiting me
 


The rain dripped on me and
I, flaming and blazing
Can only watch the cooling fumes
Elevate from my body
To merge in with the atmosphere!
 
Pray, to love what is forbidden is a sin
To love still and to yearn for such
Becomes an obsession
An obsession transgressing the limits of passion
A passion which can ruin the many stages of my efforts
My efforts to attain salvation!
 
Why, sense desires are not to be accounted for
The appealing flesh, so seductive and alluring
Shall someday lose its sparkle
Inhabited it is, like me, by a consciousness
A consciousness which can at times be awakened
At others, dormant and ignorant
Yet, on some days, sense desires wake up in me
And become a raging magmatic pit
Ready to burst at any moment
And break my sheltered fortress to pieces
 
Thankfully, the skies bestow on us rain
And rain drops, dripping all over me
Falling with a thud of my head
And sliding down my skin
Douse the heat and extricate from me
My sensual femininity
Why, how torrid
How torrid is the havoc that inhabits me!
 


                                      Topiary of life
 


Trees are magnificent
Strong barks
Holding on firmly, solidly attached
To roots in the soil
And decorated by lush, fragranced leaves
Or even at times,
By ripe, juicy fruits!
 
Trees, so silent, so calm, so peace giving
So invigorating
That walking among them
Disperses my anxieties
That sitting down under their shade
Connects me to the mother of all earthlings
That hugging them so tightly
Immerses in me some sort of strength and
Elevates the hues of my aura!
 
Trees, seeming to be the ancients of life
So silent, so observant, so wise
They just watch life go by
They just watch us,
Humans, all confused with life
All anguished and lamenting
And sigh out the oxygen that we need
To keep us sustained to life!
 
Yes, someday, when I shall be buried deep
Maybe the minerals of the remains of my body
Shall get to merge in with the essence of trees
And thus, they shall get the energy
And the capacity
To sustain more life
Pray
Is this not the endless cycle of life?