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Poetry
by Donal Mahoney
Father,
Again, Peering
The final years dear Mother she
was never, well, what actors call "on location."
Physically, of course, we found her
everywhere:
the parlor reading,
the kitchen ironing,
the basement sweeping,
unlike Father whom we never found
though he was always there.
On Sundays when he went to Mass,
he'd stay behind, peering.
Like Queeg, he'd stare
from under or behind
whatever he wasn't
hiding in front of.
top
Before
I Sally Off
Lost in Chicago
State and Madison.
Saturday, high noon.
Everyone and me.
Surrounded, I give up.
Against the curb,
the sea foams up
and in the distance
white birds soar,
black apostrophes
cleaver split
but still tangential,
rising, falling.
The light goes green.
Before I sally off
I look down and there
against the curb,
great white waters bowl
and people drown.
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Black
Seed by Black Seed
Every day the same people
at the same table
at the rear of the cafeteria.
The maiden, 35 at least,
is gray at the temples,
sour at the mouth.
The widow, 55, waves
a cigarette like a wand.
Girdled and dyed,
she needs no one now;
She ministers to a dog
and has a new apartment.
The accountant, 65, wants to retire,
his years of intemperance
tempered by a stroke,
his anger at everything
suddenly gone. The janitor, 60,
explains over and over
how over the weekend
he snipped from his garden
husks of dead sunflowers
and drove them out of the city
and into the forest
and there in a clearing
spread the black cakes
for chipmunks to strip,
black seed by black seed.
I, a young editor,
"with your whole life
in front of you," they insist,
sit through it all,
Monday through Friday,
spooning broth, buttering slices
of rye, and praying that after
pudding again for dessert,
the phone on my desk
will explode too late
with a call I'll take anyway,
and that after that call, I'll rise
and take from my sport coat
a speech I wrote years ago,
a speech I'll discard for two lines
off the cuff: "Here's two weeks' notice.
I have found a new job."
top
Donal Mahoney, a native of
Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for
The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington
University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted
by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina
Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic
(Bulgaria), Gloom Cupboard (U.K.), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul
Literary Review (Turkey), Poetry Friends, Word Catalyst, Poetry
Super Highway, Pirene's Fountain (Australia) and other publications.
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