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
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                   The Canyon Dwellers


There’s this canyon 
between two cliffs
and Tim Boyd has a foot
planted on each cliff.
He’s spread-eagled 
but very steady.


He's been stretched
over the canyon since 
he got back from Iraq.
After he took his position,
he thought someone 
would eventually look up.


There are others
spread over the canyon
in front of Tim. 
They’ve been there
since Viet Nam and
getting a bit wobbly.


In back of Tim
are the new arrivals
spread-eagled as well.
They’re fresh from
Afghanistan and they're
getting their feet set. 


The rest of us below
have jobs and are busy
with families and lives. 
When a canyon dweller falls 
and makes a terrible mess, 
we find the time to look up.



                                Like Father Like


Strapped to his bed
in the nursing home,
he tells every nurse
who comes in 
and tightens his straps 
his trouble started

in first grade when
he'd make a mistake 
reciting the alphabet
in the kitchen for Mother
while Father in the parlor
waited for an error 

and then dragged him 
down the basement
and made him stand
in a tub of hot coals 
plucked from the furnace
until he was able  

to recite his letters 
without error and then
Father would take him
upstairs to Mother who 
put salve on his feet
so he could recite 


his letters all over again,
this time without mistake 
which Father pointed out, 
decades later in the same
nursing home, was proof 
his boy had learned a lesson.



                    A Ticket to Somewhere


When I was eight
I jumped off a roof as if 
I had a parachute 
and broke a leg.
He was there when I landed,
told me to be careful,
said I was too young
and then disappeared.


In a high school game
I went up for a rebound,
came down on my head
and got a concussion.
When I landed 
he was there again, 
said I was still too young
and had better be careful.


In my late forties 
I almost got hit by a truck
but jumped back in time
and landed on the curb.
This time he told me 
I was no longer too young
and if I wasn’t careful
I might see him again.


Now decades later 
I have been very careful 
but I still watch for him
because the last time he said
every one of us has
a ticket to somewhere
with choices to make
and moments to decide.



                      Six-Pack Uncle Jack



Sing a song of six-packs 
and quickly tell me where 
Uncle Jack has gone 


drunk but debonair. 
He can’t remember where
he left his Philomena


tall and fetching fair.
He wants to find her.
She’s the one  


he wants to marry
but he's lost her number 
and is now afraid 

he may never dance 
with her again unless
perhaps in paradise where  

she’s waiting, he has heard,
lighting up the brightest star 
far from hades where 


Jack has a reservation. 
He’ll cancel that to dance 
with her among the clouds 


but this will halt all revelry 
for Uncle Jack on earth.
Not even one more six-pack.


                   Judy's Father and Mine


The only difference between 
Judy’s father and mine
is my father didn’t drink.
When we were tykes 
they’d come home from work 
in a rage every evening, 
her father drinking into the night 
and mine sitting in silence
in a tiny parlor playing
ancient reels and jigs 
on a huge RCA Victrola.


Her father wore a tie
and carried a brief case,
and mine wore coveralls
and carried a lunch bucket 
into the alleys of Chicago
climbing light poles to fix 
dead wires so all could see.
Her father came home neat,
mine soaked in sweat.


But they were twins, 
Siamese if you will, 
each miserable in his own way, 
driving wives and children nuts.
I always wondered if Judy and I
had normal fathers, if we
would have been 
scriveners as adults.


I know I would have gone
to law school and railed
in court in behalf of 
the innocent and guilty
and made wads of money 
I’d be fingering now instead 
of sitting behind a keyboard 
at dawn still typing. 
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