Donal Mahoney Poems

Black bug no bigger
than a pepper grain
rules the bathroom floor.
He's on patrol this morning,
...

Here in Chicago I sit in the sun
of an Indian Summer
high on the Water Tower waiting,

chapped hands in a visor
...

The gap between potency and act,
the scholar says, is demonstrated
by this anecdote:
...

Some men discover
that all men are equal
in the eyes of a shark.
It's no wonder Butch
...

Like many people today, Wally Przbylski works on a computer. For Wally, a computer looks like a typewriter attached to a television screen. It's a big improvement, however, over the Royal typewriter he worked on in the Fifties before a job change in the Sixties forced him to move to an IBM Selectric. As an editor, he was always on deadline and speed was important.

In the Eighties, a defense contractor hired Wally and he learned to edit on a Wang computer. His job was to copyedit technical prose written by engineers. The engineers wrote proposals to win contracts from the government. From Wally's point of view, the engineers were a strange lot.
...

A friend of buffett
a friend of gates
a billionaire in
silver and gold
...

Wherever I go,
there I am
but if I'm not there
...

Third day on the new job and Sue calls.
Will I hurry home and sit with our daughter
while she runs with Sean to the doctor.
...

How many times have I said
I'm through teasing myself,
through pretending
I don't enjoy
...

After reading too much Aquinas

Would an aphid reside in an onager's ear
if the onager's master spoke Twi?
...