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DONAL MAHONEY - POEMS

4/15/2017

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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


                      Alice Bent Over 




A gathering of elders
from the local rest home
is out for a walk after dusk

on canes and walkers 
admiring roses and lilies 
and a pond of rainbow koi 

except for Alice trailing 
without cane or walker 
whose head is bent over   

at the neck so she sees
nothing but ants 
scurrying around her.

Alice is the letter “L” 
upside down forever. 
She will never see the sun

light up the sky or the stars 
glow in the night or the halo 
of moonlight falling around her.




               A Widow a Year Now


She’s been a widow
a year now and at times 
she still misses him

when she drives past 
the steak house where he
would take her to eat 

and the theatre where he 
would take her to see
plays on opening night

and the jewelry store
where he would buy her
diamond necklaces,

bracelets and earrings 
she recently had to sell.
Sam was broke when 

he died, nothing in the will 
except the house he had
mortgaged again but now 

after her frozen TV dinner 
she can turn up the volume
on her big-screen TV 

loud as she wants without 
wearing the hearing aids  
she always had to put in 

when Sam was alive.
Every night she is happy 
the old bastard is dead. 

That son of bitch
didn’t leave her a cent.
Damn him.



                A Relocation Problem


We’ve moved
my wife and I from home 
to the last place

we’ll ever live and she 
wants to know why 
I’m sitting around

not helping to unpack.
So I tell her the problem
which is her problem too

but she keeps unpacking.
I’m not at home, I tell her,
but I’m not here either.

Not to worry, I say.
I’ll let both of us in 
when we arrive.



         Advice from His Cardiologist


His cardiologist says

Fred's doing well 
for a man of 80.
It won't be his heart
that kills him. 
But he needs to 

exercise more.

Fred goes home 

and tells his wife 
he needs 
to exercise more.

She reminds Fred   
he can't get out of bed 
without her help.
And her back she says 
is a wolf howling.

So Fred sits down 
and wiggles his toes
n his old recliner 
and waits for the day 
the hearse pulls up 
and takes him away.



                       Sibling Reunion

​

They're getting older,
five brothers and sisters,
all with degrees, jobs, families, 
nice homes, good lives, happier 
than most except when they must 
fly to the home of their childhood 
and settle their mother's estate.

They gather in the old stucco 
none of them is willing to sell. 
They drink bourbon and scotch 
and tell each other everything again
that happened when they were young, 
what made them take planes anywhere
trying to escape and forget. 

A few more drinks and they see the bees 
swarming the day Mom knocked the hive 
out of the willow with her clothesline pole.
They were young, not yet in school, 
happy and laughing, clapping but not 
understanding why Father was gone, 
why he would call but never come home.

All summer they rode tricycles 
into each other, yelling and screaming, 
ringing the bells on the handlebars,
trying to figure out what had happened.

Another few drinks and they agree 
it's time to go out in the yard and look up 
in the tree where the hive used to be. 
Once again they hear children
yelling and screaming, 
riding into each other, ringing bells, 
looking everywhere for answers, 
not knowing the questions.

In minutes they realize the reunion's over
and there may never be another.
It's time to pack, get on planes, escape
before someone puts a match to the stucco.
The hive's on the ground bouncing 
and they're all bees, swarming again.


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