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 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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