 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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