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Art Poetry Prose Photos Books&... Links Archives About Home

Two Mutes in the Press Room

The two mutes we hired
to wheel hot type
are bickering again

Their fingers
quicker than beaks of cocks
tear the air

with perfect curses
tongues never utter
ears never hear

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With Him

Look so pretty you
no sound floats
out of my mouth

as I sit silent now
staring through you
boring in

wondering
what it is that
does this

to me now
and every time
I see you

just out walking
talking
laughing with him

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On the Road to Chicago

I sit on the Water Tower waiting
chapped hands in a visor over my eyes
looking toward Durham

hoping I see
you in that gown
on the road to Chicago

I don't care if you stop
by Confederate streams
to pick phallic rocks

so long as you rise
release all your hair
float on to Chicago

No more will I sit
on the Water Tower waiting
I'd rather go blind

than see through the sun
you in that gown
rise in the air

pirouette in the wind
giggle again and
float back to Durham

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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, Commonweal, Snakeskin (U.K.), Revival (Ireland), Pirene's Fountain (Australia), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Word Catalyst, Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.