Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis Missouri. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.gpbT6XZy.dpbs

                   The Man Who Lives in the Gym

        St. Procopius College
        Lisle, Illinois
        after World War II

The man who lives in the gym
sleeps in a nook up the stairs
to the rear. Since Poland 
he's slept there, his tools
bright in a box locked 

under his bed. At noon bells
call him down to the stones
that weave under oaks to the abbey
where he at long table takes 
meals with the others 
the monks have left in 

for a week, or a month, or a year
or forever, whatever 
the need. The others all know
that in Poland his wife
had been skewered, his children
partitioned, that he had escaped

in a freight car of hams.
So when Brother brings in, on a gun
metal tray, orange sherbet for all
in little green dishes,
they blink at his smile,
they join in his laughter. 


                     Tenement Scene, Havana, 1962

Woman in a window
brushing long hair madly
screams at a little boy

down in the street
licking an ice cream cone
some man gave him

some man she doesn’t know
not the man she’s 
brushing her hair for

who doesn't show up.
The man with the ice cream
may have to do.



                      Special of the Day

It’s Rocky’s Diner
but it’s Brenda’s counter,
been that way for 10 years.
Brenda has her regulars
who want the Special of the Day.
They know the week is over 

when it’s perch on Friday.
Her drifters don’t care about 
the Special of the Day. 
They want Brenda instead
but she’s made it clear 
she’s not available.

Her regular customers tip well.
Long ago, they gave up
trying to see her after work.
After awhile her drifters go  
to the diner down the street 
to see if the waitress there

is any more hospitable. 
Brenda’s regulars don’t know
she has three kids her mother
watched every day until Brenda 
took a vacation out of town,
then came back and helped her 

mother find a place of her own. 
Now Brenda’s back at the diner,
serving her regulars and 
discouraging her drifters,
while Marsha, her bride,
watches the kids.

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

(Photo: Carol Bales)

THE HONEY ROOM by Donal Mahoney


Brother Al, in his hood,
is out in his field
making love to his bees.
From my room I can see him
move through his hives
the way people should move
among people.
The bees give him gold and the gold
turns orange in the jars
that he sells in a room
near the door of the abbey.
The Honey Room, everyone calls it.
Besides Brother Al, only I
go into that room full of honey.
I go in there and bend
and look through the jars
on the shelves and the sills
till there in the orange I see Sue
standing straight
in a field of her own
with a smile
for our garland of children.
 

IN BREAK FORMATION by Donal Mahoney

 
The indications used to come
like movie fighter planes in break
formation, one by one, the perfect
plummet, down and out. This time they’re
slower. But after supper, when I hear her 
in the kitchen hum again, hum higher, 
higher, till my ears are numb, 
I remember how it was
the last time: how she hummed
to Aramaic peaks, flung
supper plates across the kitchen
till I brought her by the shoulders
humming to the chair.
I remember how the final days
her eyelids, operating on their own,
rose and fell, how she strolled
among the children, winding tractors,
hugging dolls, how finally
I phoned and had them come again, 
how I walked behind them
as they took her by the shoulders,
house dress in the breeze, slowly
down the walk and to the curbing,
how I watched them bend her 
in the back seat of the squad again,
how I watched them pull away
and heard again the parliament
of neighbors talking.