Donal Mahoney

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
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When I get home
things will be the same.
I haven't changed.
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Monsanto still has problems
after the carnage caused
by Agent Orange.
People continue to decay.
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Walking very slowly, ancient Wally's
right behind his ancient Molly who's
stepping down the garden path,
her first time out in weeks,
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It’s pretty simple, really.
The world will end
whether we believe
the Bible is a myth or truth.
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Years ago they came from many places
to study writing at a university
in the middle of America
surrounded by lush corn fields.
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You have the back rent
and come home from work
and find everything in a mountain
out on the lawn with the kids
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We all know the story but who'll believe it?
Big Bang creates something from nothing
but who struck the match is a mystery.
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This evening when I return to the hotel
I see in my pigeonhole
Angela's writing
on a yellow envelope.
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She walks the rack of bright frocks
as her husband, an Angus aging,
paws at the carpet behind her.
She wants the right dress
...

Sixty years ago,
the two of us rode tricycles
up a little hill
behind our school.
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Wilbur's always lived
in the navel of society,
lost in the lint
of the middle class.
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The older I get the more I realize
the importance of getting things done
before your mother announces another
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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.
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Birds and possums,
coons and squirrels
frequent my wife’s garden.
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In this college town
three girls of Spring are fresh bread
brown before the noon of May.
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The rain is very thorough.
Going where I have to go
this summer afternoon
...

In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A social worker had a degree or two in social work and was qualified to work with the poor. A caseworker usually had a degree but not in social work. And a caseworker usually had too many clients to have time to do social work even if he or she had a social work degree and knew how to apply it.

To be hired by Cook County Department of Public Aid as a caseworker in 1962, all one had to have was a degree in anything and the ability to pass a test. I passed the test and was assigned as a novice caseworker to Cabrini-Green, perhaps the “toughest' housing project in Chicago at that time. I was assigned to two high-rise buildings with 458 families. I remember their addresses as clearly today as the address of my childhood home. Some things one always remembers.
...

If The Donald gets his way
Lupe will no longer
clean toilets in America
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