Donal Mahoney Poems

I rise to pee at midnight
and it's nice to see
no gunman in the bathroom
waiting to shoot me
...

The stench came first,
the young man remembers.
It was as if someone had
grabbed him by the ankles,
...

Granny wants to go to a movie
back in the old neighborhood
where she and Gramps used to
neck in high school but Gramps
...

Many decades ago, Tim had spent eight years staring at the back of Edmund's head. He had no choice because their surnames began with the same letter and they had been seated alphabetically by the nuns who taught them in grammar school. It was the Fifties, and their neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago was home to immigrant families from all over Europe.

Many of the children had parents who struggled to speak English. Not so with Tim. His parents had come to America from Ireland speaking fluent English delivered in a musical brogue. Edmund's parents, however, had come to the United States from what was then known as Bohemia and is today Czechoslovakia. They spoke what was called "broken" English but had no trouble adjusting to life in America. They worked hard, as did most of the immigrants in that neighborhood, to realize their American dream.
...

Teddy Fister took the bus to work today, something he will never do again, unless the used car he plans to buy tonight also croaks in the middle of an intersection the way his 1960 Rambler did last night. He sold the clunker on the spot to the tow-truck driver who took it to his junkyard. And that's where his beloved Rambler, and its 210,000 miles, sits in a row with other cars, some terminal and others deceased, every one of them waiting for an automotive mortician to part them out.

That unfortunate incident is why Teddy is on the bus this morning, bouncing up and down with others, including a rotund man, redolent of garlic, who took the seat next to Teddy a moment ago. The rotund man is Oliver Beckin. After he settled in next to Teddy, he began a soliloquy that everyone on the bus could hear if not enjoy. The oratory was very philosophical in nature. Some might even say it was spiritual in that it was an account of how Oliver had reached the age of 50 this day without any idea of where he was going after he died. And on this particular day, after a lifetime of not caring about that subject, Oliver Beckin was looking for an answer, if an answer to a question like that was available.
...

In 1948 Booger McNulty's coal yard stirred constant gossip among the citizens who lived in the little bungalows on the narrow blocks in my far corner of Chicago. That was more than 60 years ago, a time when families took Sunday walks and went back home in time to hear Jack Benny on the radio. A Sunday walk didn't cost a cent, a price my parents could afford.

My sister and I always had to tag along when my parents took their Sunday walk, and every time we'd pass Booger's place, I'd hear my mother ask my father what could possibly be on the other side of Booger's 10-foot fence. Hoping to avoid a conversation, my father would always say he didn't know but he believed it couldn't just be coal.
...

Anyone who has written fiction or poetry probably has been asked at one time or another, 'Why did you write that? ' I've been asked that question and I have never been able to provide an answer.

Some writers may set out to write a poem that will address an important question about life, such as who we are as human beings and what purpose, if any, we have on Earth. I have never tried to write a poem like that. Nor have I ever written a poem knowing in advance what it might say. I just write down 'words' that come to me, provided I like the way they sound and like their 'rhythm' when heard together.
...

Next to me on the train
going home to the suburbs
is another guy stuck in a suit
reading his paper,
...

Ferguson will roll
until we turn
the volume down
and have no need to seek
...

Zenobia Jackson told Officer Murphy that her husband, Rufus, was 73 years old and 'a wonderful man when he was awake' but for the past year he had been jerking 'something terrible' during his sleep and had kept waking her up. He'd swing his arms, she said, like those martial arts men he liked to watch so much on television. When the bouts were over, he'd give her a big kiss on the forehead and go to bed.

'Oh, he was just a doll, ' she said, 'when he was awake.'
...