Donal Mahoney Poems

Very late in life bullets answered jeers
Paul once used to tease a little boy
coming home from school.
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In camps in Hungary
Syrian refugees squat in mud.
Let them board trains
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A coffin’s not so bad, the old monk told me,
the two of us standing there, a foot or two
from the monk who had died the day before
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Millie comes home bawling
from another holiday party and
Willie asks what’s the problem.
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Let’s stop the crying, Millie.
It’s true our friends are dying.
They’re old like you and me.
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If I didn’t know He’s there
in the bread and wine
I see and taste
I’d be a Quaker in a pew
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It’s not the same as seeing the poor
in Bangladesh on PBS and hearing
Gwen or Judy tell us about them because
the poor in Bangladesh scream in silence,
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Aunt Bea is 102 so who am I
to contradict her when she
calls Shady Acres
the Old Folks Home
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He owns Town Caricature,
a small paper catering
to folks who need help.
The paper is kind to all
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Perhaps young writers today who hope to write poetry or fiction while teaching at the college level might profit from my experience years ago when I had the same dreams. I was finishing a master’s degree in English, hoping to go on for the doctorate, and then teach as a professor of English at a college or university, and write poems for the rest of my life. Maybe a little fiction as well, I thought, after reading J.D. Salinger.

Then I attended my first English Department holiday party for faculty and staff at my university. I was invited because I had an assistantship that required I teach two courses of rhetoric a semester in return for remission of tuition and a small stipend. The professors and their wives were all there and this was the first time I had seen my teachers outside the classroom environment.
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