DONAL MAHONEY

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)

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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.