Donal Mahoney Poems

On their 50th anniversary
Sammy gave Dolly a necklace
and told his darling wife that
if they lived long enough
...

According to the anchor on the News at Six, Olaf Parker was shot dead at dawn this morning delivering newspapers in his van. His body was found on the front seat, a cigarette burning near his feet, when police responded to a call from a resident who heard his van crash into a utility pole.

Mr. Parker wasn't robbed. There were a few newspapers on the seat next to his body. These were the last papers he had to deliver on the final block of his route before going home to tend to his dying wife, according to his supervisor. Funeral arrangements are pending.
...

Marvin's a man who never
does anything he doesn't have to.
One day, however, to the delight
of Miriam, his wife, he became
...

Nice old Grandpa likes to yodel
whenever he recalls the boys who
beat him up in third grade.
...

A wound like that
doesn't leave a scar
because it never heals.
...

Black bug no bigger
than a pepper grain
rules the bathroom floor.
He's on patrol this morning,
...

Here in Chicago I sit in the sun
of an Indian Summer
high on the Water Tower waiting,

chapped hands in a visor
...

The gap between potency and act,
the scholar says, is demonstrated
by this anecdote:
...

Some men discover
that all men are equal
in the eyes of a shark.
It's no wonder Butch
...

Like many people today, Wally Przbylski works on a computer. For Wally, a computer looks like a typewriter attached to a television screen. It's a big improvement, however, over the Royal typewriter he worked on in the Fifties before a job change in the Sixties forced him to move to an IBM Selectric. As an editor, he was always on deadline and speed was important.

In the Eighties, a defense contractor hired Wally and he learned to edit on a Wang computer. His job was to copyedit technical prose written by engineers. The engineers wrote proposals to win contracts from the government. From Wally's point of view, the engineers were a strange lot.
...