Donal Mahoney Poems

Dr. Chapman had been valedictorian of his class in high school and college but had finished second in his class in medical school, something that still bothered him after 30 years of successful practice in a small city where no one knew him when he opened his office but where today he was much appreciated by his patients. Many of them came from all over the state to see him.

Over the years, he had hired a number of practical nurses to assist him in his practice and went out of his way to hire those that might have had trouble being hired elsewhere due to discrimination. He was proud of his record and didn't have much turnover in staff.
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All the rest are dead
except for Joe and Ed,
both ill and long retired.
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It was their wedding night and Priya didn’t want to tell her new husband all about it but Bill kept asking where she had learned to walk like that. Finally she told him it was inherited from a previous life, a life she had lived many years ago in India, not far from Bangalore. She had been a cobra kept in a charmer’s basket.

When the charmer found a customer, usually a Brit or Yank, he would play his flute and Priya would uncoil and rise from the basket. Her hood would swell and she would sway as long as the customer had enough money to keep paying the charmer. She never tried to bite a customer but some of the men weren’t the nicest people in the world. You think they would know better than to tease a cobra.
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I told my guest
it’s just a poem
doesn't mean a thing
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Let’s not worry about it, Dearie,
life gets better, life gets worse.
We’re no different than
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She speaks the truth
as she always has
in 40 years of marriage
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There’s nothing else to say.
The problem won’t go away.

It will palpitate until
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Sing a song of six-packs
and quickly tell me where
Uncle Jack has gone
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After all these years
the two of them,
one of them alive
the other dead,
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Sometimes you sit for days
sucking yourself in
praying the right words
will fall in your ear
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