Author Interview Poem by Donal Mahoney

The author tells the reporter
from the New Yorker he has
no electrical power in his cave
and that’s why he writes

with quills on parchment
stopping for a couple of hours
of sleep and a couple of bats
from the ceiling to eat.

He writes in a cave, he says,
to avoid the world and lives
in stories to forget the cave
unless the stories are bleak

then he writes poems about
long-legged ladies with smiles
like angels, eyes like suns
and waterfall hair, ladies who
won’t visit because he’s a gnome.