Donal Mahoney Poems

When Barney Murphy married Blanche O'Brien, he told her almost every day from the wedding on that she was apricots and peaches, an orchard that was his alone to wander, plucking fruit as he saw fit, all of it ripe and juicy, something he would savor for the rest of his life. Blanche, a shy woman, really liked the way Barney could talk. He made nonsense sensible, she told her parents. Blanche was a very happy wife.

From the sixth month on during her first pregnancy, Blanche would ask Barney every day to pat her watermelon. When it finally burst, a boy popped out, and then a girl right after the boy, and then another boy right after the girl. Blanche had given birth to triplets within minutes of each other, lovely infants, all three of them plump and crowned with hair that ran in rivulets of curls.
...

On Sunday his wife
and children walk
to Mass
...

Pastor Homer is a jealous man
and Opal gives him fits
through 40 years of marriage
dancing, laughing
...

I used to dream
in black and white
but now I dream in color.
Blood is red and real
...

The dapper young man tells
the homeless man one stool over,
After I get my law degree,
I'll get an MBA and go to Wall Street
...

There are people
I hope to see
lolling on a cloud
...

'Sometimes I want to sit down
and never get up, ' she confided,
tapping her cane as we crossed
...

I'm no expert on marriage
but you asked me so
here's how I see it,
decades removed from
...

If I hadn't died, I'd still
be bouncing along
in that Greyhound bus
through the mountains
...

The poor are hungry in America.
Their numbers would fill stadiums
throughout this prosperous land.
And feral cats are running wild,
...