Donal Mahoney
Donal Mahoney Poems
In the waiting room, I squeeze
this old rosary a nun gave me
the day I got back from Iraq.
...
Cookies for George,
40 years back from Viet Nam,
are the only payment
the man will accept
...
When I get home
things will be the same.
I haven't changed.
...
Monsanto still has problems
after the carnage caused
by Agent Orange.
People continue to decay.
...
Walking very slowly, ancient Wally's
right behind his ancient Molly who's
stepping down the garden path,
her first time out in weeks,
...
It’s pretty simple, really.
The world will end
whether we believe
the Bible is a myth or truth.
...
Years ago they came from many places
to study writing at a university
in the middle of America
surrounded by lush corn fields.
...
You have the back rent
and come home from work
and find everything in a mountain
out on the lawn with the kids
...
She walks the rack of bright frocks
as her husband, an Angus aging,
paws at the carpet behind her.
She wants the right dress
...
This evening when I return to the hotel
I see in my pigeonhole
Angela's writing
on a yellow envelope.
...
Sixty years ago,
the two of us rode tricycles
up a little hill
behind our school.
...
Wilbur's always lived
in the navel of society,
lost in the lint
of the middle class.
...
The older I get the more I realize
the importance of getting things done
before your mother announces another
...
You'll never see him again, you say,
but what if he brings to your room
a midnight poem he says
he's written for you.
...
We all know the story but who'll believe it?
Big Bang creates something from nothing
but who struck the match is a mystery.
...
When the next emperor dies
and arrives in Hades
there will be great applause
...
Tomorrow morning when I wake
it'll be the nurse who's crazy.
I'll heave my body up
on its elbows and yell
...
A drunk on the subway
tells another drunk something
a bartender told him.
...
They never held hands
when they were a couple
young and newly married
as much in love as they were
...
Where did it go?
I really don't know.
I lost it weeks ago
in the middle of the night.
...
The Best Poem Of Donal Mahoney
Ptsd
In the waiting room, I squeeze
this old rosary a nun gave me
the day I got back from Iraq.
I was still in a daze on a gurney
and I still had sand in my hair.
Some of it remains, no matter
how many showers I take.
Sand from Iraq lingers, I'm told,
until you go bald, and then
you are able to concentrate
on other things.
What might they be, I wonder.
But today, in this waiting room,
I squeeze the rosary tighter
when I hear, louder than
the gunshots crackling in my dreams,
the real screams of that little boy
right over there, the one who's
rapped his elbow off the radiator.
Lord, listen to him scream!
Each week he comes with his mother
for her follow-up appointment.
He sounds like the jet
that takes me back at night
to that little village in Iraq
where the sand puffs up
in mushroom clouds
above the bullets
as the children scream
in their hovels louder
than that little boy
screaming over there.
Maybe everyone
in this waiting room
listening to him scream
can come with me now
to that village in Iraq.
Sitting here, I know
that boy's pain so well
that in my fist
this rosary no longer
knows my prayers.
Donal Mahoney Comments
Viva Donal Mahoney... author of some of the loveliest poetry I've read this year!
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4/25/2024 10:37:53 PM # 1.0.0.1119
In Break Formation and Other Poems by Donal Mahoney, first print collection, was published June 26,2023, is available on Amazon