Donal Mahoney - Poems

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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                                A Chance to Say Good-Bye

After World War II 
before television, 
before women had tattoos
before men wore earrings, 
I was a child in a world
with kids as odd as me.
I’m still here but tell me
where are they?

Remember Joey Joey
who yelped in class 
every day before 
doctors knew the nature 
of his problem, his
barbaric yawps scaring girls 
and driving boys down 
on their desks laughing
until the day he disappeared.
I had no chance to say good-bye.

Can’t forget Petey, the toughest kid
in class, not quite right either.
He uppercut a girl in the third row 
and disappeared the same day.
So did Bobby, who my mother saw 
on his porch eating worms
one by one off a porcelain dish
as she was coming home from church 
under a parasol, stylish in that era.
She asked if Bobby and I were friends 
and I said, “Bobby Who?"
I had no chance to say good-bye. 

But Jimmy was the nonpareil
when it came to kids not right.
I saw him after graduation leap-frog 
parking meters like a kangaroo 
down 63rd Street for half a block
woofing as he cleared them
until the cops took him home.
I had no chance to say good-bye.

They locked Jimmy in the attic
of his parents’ house for years 
but at least he didn’t disappear.
Years later I saw him in a dark bar 
with his twin brother drinking beer. 
He sat quietly, not a single woof,
not a bar stool threatened by a leap.
There I had a chance to say good-bye.




                                   A Quiet Beauty in Gray

The beauty of gray
I never noticed until
the other day I saw

this mockingbird, 
a quiet beauty in gray,
on the bare limb

of a dogwood tree,
peer down through snow
and scold below 

a Maine Coon cat,
a jungle of fur in gray,
sitting and staring at 

a feast that will never be, 
the two of them a watercolor
in the quiet beauty of gray.



                                     Answering Machine

My wife’s upset because
I won’t answer the phone
in the middle of the night
even though the phone's
on my side of the bed.

And I say that’s because after
all these years we both know
whenever the phone rings
in the middle of the night,
someone we know, maybe

someone we love, has
died in an accident or 
is lingering in some ER.
That’s why I’d rather
let the message go to 

the answering machine 
and the two of us 
can listen to it there.
It gives me time to stiffen
and my wife time to cry.




                           Trickle-Down Economics

It’s war
plain and simple
when I fill the feeder

out in the sycamore
with millet and niger
and sunflower seed.

Back in the house
I stare out the window
and watch juncos

and chickadees bicker
on the perch, spilling 
more than they eat. 

Cardinals and jays  
drive them away, argue 
and spill even more.

Then starlings take over,
and like rice at a wedding,
seed fills the air

pleasing the doves below. 
They walk like old nuns 
and peck at the manna.




                                   Apples Fall Close to Trees

My mother always said my father 
was a little odd and she lived with him 
all those years and should have known.
When we were small my sister and I 
knew he was different. No other father
answered questions in double talk 
hidden in a brogue.

My sister and I finally agreed decades later 
that all the neighbors who said he was odd 
were right, too, and who can blame them.
When Mr. Bittle over the fence told my father  
Mr. Murphy from down the block had died, my 
father told Mr. Bittle that people were dying now 
who had never before died. It’s no wonder 
Mr. Bittle went back in the house.

My mother said she often forgot how odd 
my father was until he came home from work. 
Once when he was removing the thermos 
from his lunch bucket she told him someone 
had stolen the Brickles’ truck and he yelled,
“What would Mary Supple say to that?”
My mother asked who Mary Supple was 
and my father said she was John Godley’s 
cousin who had married Paddy Supple. 

My mother said she had never heard 
of John Godley or Paddy Supple and 
my father said that's because she came 
from the wrong side of Ireland and not 
the side he came from where everyone 
knew the Godleys and Supples farmed 
the land next to the cliff that dropped 
into the sea and if you were courting 
after visiting Ryan’s pub you had to be 
careful dancing close to the edge.

As a grandfather myself now I know 
when I double talk with grandson Jack 
and ask him whether kids walk to school 
or carry their lunch and he says they ride 
the bus, I’m not surprised when he asks me 
what’s the difference between an orange. 

That’s when I tell Jack it wouldn’t be fair 
if Grumpa told him the answer because 
he’s too smart and can look it up 
in the encyclopedia on my desk.
And then Jack says he’ll Google it
on the iPad when his dad gets home.
He wants an iPad for his birthday, Jack says.
And that’s when I hear my father yelling,
"What would Mary Supple say to that?”