Donal Mahoney Poems

I heard from Harold
this morning, someone
older than I am, the two of us
in winter staring at another spring
...

Forty years ago, David Germaine had been an editor with a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in a large city. After that, he had worked at many smaller papers in smaller cities because if one wanted to work for a newspaper, one had to go where the work was. And David loved newspapers.

As computers took over the newspaper business, reporters still wrote but often it was some new software that “edited” their copy, checking for spelling and grammatical mistakes but not always with accuracy. At some papers not yet fully transitioned to computers, human editors were still needed. More and more, however, as the software continued to improve, editors in cities, towns and villages grew fewer in number. And mistakes in newspapers became greater in number.
...

I turn the porch light on at 4 a.m.
to see if a miracle’s occurred
and the paper's landed somewhere
...

It always begins
like indigestion,
slowly at first,
then full bore.
...

For years leprechauns lived
under Pop's fedora.
They danced jigs on his head
when he wore it
...

Of her eyes
and of her hair
I have been
aware one year
...

Listen, young lady,
this is the man

who will cut off your legs
...

As any capitalist knows,
you must spend less
to make a profit,
which is why I admire those
...

For years I've fed this feral cat at 4 a.m.,
a crouching mound of fur, Satanic black, with yellow eyes
that never blink. I call him 'Doubting Thomas.'
...

Tim Ryan was the smartest kid in the room- in his classroom, that is- in 8th grade back in 1952. And that was no small feat because that classroom was full of girls who studied hard all the time. The boys were less diligent and didn't normally score as high as the girls on tests. But Tim Ryan usually scored 100% on tests. He had already won an academic scholarship to one of the finest private high schools in Chicago. His only flaw was poor handwriting.

The nuns who taught at St. Nicholas were hard on students with poor penmanship. It was invariably the boys who had this problem. And the remedy, which seldom worked, was to have those with poor handwriting sIt for an hour after school and practice an approach called the Palmer Method.
...