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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                          Answer Me This, America
 

Took the wife 
to a pancake house
the other day. 
National franchise
good food 
fine reputation.
 
Skipped the pancakes
had bacon, eggs,
hash browns, toast
and coffee.
Wife went fancy,
had an omelette.
 
Grabbed the check
because the busboy 
started clearing 
the table early.
A young dervish
new to the job
swirling his cloth
for minimum wage.
 
Bothered me 
to realize he'd work
three hours and a skosh
to pay for the same 
breakfast, more
if he left a tip.
 
Reminded me 
something’s wrong
with our great nation,
how we do business.
Have both ears open.
Hoping for an answer.
 
 

 
                           A Great Time for a Climb
 

That’s a very big tree
and a boy scout could climb it
with all the right gear.
 
But it’s a condominium, too.
You would disturb families.
Blue Jays don’t feature
 
interruptions when they
have young in the nest.
They put up with
 
squirrels scampering
across the branches.
Robins have young too 
 
but they have no interest
in seeds or nuts and 
no one else likes worms.
 
Sparrows chatter away 
and raise a ruckus since
they have young also.
 
Why not wait until fall
when the young leave the tree.
Fall's a great time for a climb.
 
 

 
             Remembering a War We Tend to Forget
 

I will never forget him
but I can’t remember his name
it’s been so long ago.
Maybe I never knew it. 
 
But I think of him on days
America celebrates its veterans--
Memorial Day, July 4th,
Veterans Day, D-Day.
The wars are all remembered 
but not so much this one.
 
He was Billy's big brother
and more than 60 years ago
Billy and the rest of us
were in 8th grade watching
him climb a ladder
and hammer a hoop 
on the roof of a garage
so we could play ball
while he went to Korea. 
 
I saw him again when he 
came back from Korea.
He was walking in circles 
in the family’s backyard 
smoking Pall Malls,
one after another, talking 
to no one we could see.
 
We were practicing at 
the hoop he nailed up 
before he went to Korea.
We were seniors
in high school then 
and had to be ready. 
We practiced all summer
for the season ahead.
 
 
 
 
                                  A Man and a Dog
 

A reporter asked Wilbur once
if there were any advantages
to being deaf and Wilbur
 
used sign language to say
not that he could think of
except you miss all the gossip
 
and that’s a good thing
if you live alone in a trailer camp
in a small town in Oklahoma
 
but it’s not a good thing
when a tornado comes through
and everyone else hears it
 
at midnight and gets out alive
but they forget to wake you
and you go up with the tornado 
 
along with a dog 
you can’t hear barking,
two small stars in the sky.
 
 
 
                              An Old Friend in a Box
 
​
I found an old friend
in a cardboard box
in the basement
where I left him
forty years ago.
 
His body was intact
but he never had a heart
which is why I left him
with drafts of other 
poems published 
long ago on paper 
in little magazines
decades before 
computers appeared.
 
The poems were born 
on a Royal typewriter
with carbon paper
serving as midwife.
He was the only one
I didn't sent out
but didn’t have 
the heart to abort. 
 
I took him upstairs
to see if my skills
as a surgeon 
had developed.
Maybe I could give him
a heart on my iMac. 
So far so good.
He’s not perfect
but he’s wriggling.
If he doesn’t reject 
his new heart
I’ll let you know
how he turns out.