Alice Bent Over by Donal Mahoney

A gathering of elders

from the local rest home

is out for a walk after dusk

on canes and walkers 

admiring roses and lilies 

and a pond of rainbow koi 

except for Alice trailing 

without cane or walker 

whose head is bent over   

at the neck so she sees

nothing but ants 

scurrying around her.

Alice is the letter “L” 

upside down forever. 

She will never see the sun

light up the sky or the stars 

glow in the night or the halo 

of moonlight falling around her.

Donal Mahoney has had work published in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html.

If There's Time by Donal Mahoney

It’s an old clock

hanging on a wall

in a small room 

on the third floor.

We go up there 

four times a year 

exchanging clothes

to mark the arrival 

of another season. 

Not much else in there 

except my wife’s vases 

and our yearbooks from 

the Fifties and some 

good novels we hope 

to read some day

if there’s time.

Once a year

the clock stops

and I bring up 

a new battery.

But not this year.

I told the clock don't move.

Stay right there 

and we’ll stay with you.

Donal Mahoney has had work published in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html.

Ringing in the Ears by Donal Mahoney

Ringing in the ears

has no cure. 

It’s called tinnitus

and you can pronounce it 

the way it looks or the way 

your doctor says it.

Today I discovered how 

to turn the ringing off 

and that’s to take 

a phone call from your son 

who says your daughter 

died last night.

She won the first 

and second match but  

lost the last to cancer.

An hour later you realize

the ringing in your ears

has stopped but there’s 

no silence in its wake.

A train of memories 

chugs by and stops

and then chugs on again.  

You want the ringing 

in your ears back again.

You can live with that.

Donal Mahoney has had work published in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html.

Waiting for Melvin by Donal Mahoney

Mabel in a gray cotton

dress turning to gauze

bends over her garden

feeling for a ripe cantaloupe 

to take in the house

and chunk up for supper

when suddenly she sees

a blimp in the sky 

this August afternoon.

She wants to board that blimp

before Melvin gets home,

removes his bib overalls 

and straps her butt 

because his meatloaf is cold 

and his melon hot.

If he beats her again,

she knows she can't sit 

through Sunday service.

One of many nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney  

has had poetry and fiction appear in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html.

About Dad by Donal Mahoney

They’re in the kitchen,

drinking coffee, the kids,

in their fifties now, 

figuring out what to do 

about Dad who’s 

in the parlor listening,

counting all the marbles

they think he’s lost.

The six of them flew in 

to bury mother.

They won’t go back

until they figure out 

what to do about Dad.

At the funeral they saw

Father Kelly kiss Dad’s 

wedding ring, the one 

he’s worn for 60 years.

Father Kelly bowed 

over the wheelchair 

as if Dad were pope 

and told him he’d be over 

Tuesday night as usual 

for checkers and a beer.

Best two out of three

goes to heaven first.

One of many nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney  

has had poetry and fiction appear in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at tp://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html.

A Nuclear Childhood by Donal Mahoney

What if your parents 

had never met

had never married 

had never yelled 

at each other 

and instead had wed

someone they loved

and lived peacefully 

all those years.

That would have been 

their Eden but you 

shaking there now

decades later 

wouldn’t be with us  

cursing the tremors  

of a nuclear childhood 

you still remember

long after they’re dead.

Donal Mahoney lives in St, Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. Like many people he has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes and has had poetry and fiction published in print and online in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found here:http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html.

Over and Out by Donal Mahoney

Harley turned 70 

the other day 

and died 

riding his motorcycle 

through a pink dawn, 

an old Suzuki 

not a Harley. 

He hit a fireplug 

and soared, 

a missile shot

over the handlebars.

He never made a sound

landed in 

a rose garden

but never knew it. 

Heart attack 

while airborne, 

never felt the thorns. 

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/ and some of his newer work at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.gpbT6XZy.dpbs

Donal Mahoney - Ms. Editor Savaged by Mr. Author / At Bus Stops on Thanksgiving Day

Ms. Editor Savaged by Mr. Author

It is a different society now. 

Less respect for people at either end 

and folks in the middle as well.

People no longer are treated like linen.

Too often like Kleenex used and tossed.

Since it’s a man who’s sending those emails,

don't bother taking any offense.

We men are often not too nice to women 

standing up although we can be sweet 

as honey when wanting them supine. 

You have a fine magazine but need  

thicker armor over your sensibilities. 

In my world, you’re young and while

I’d never applaud the benefits of age, 

it has at least one that’s valuable.

When you’re near the top of the hill 

it's easier to laugh at the louts below

whizzing darts past your keister.

At Bus Stops on Thanksgiving Day

Before dawn, people

who work on Thanksgiving Day  

wait in the wind for a bus 

to arrive or maybe not.

It's too cold to talk  

so the people stand 

like minutemen and plan 

a revolution that would shock  

nice families who drive by later, 

children tucked in scarves 

and mittens, laughing 

all the way to Nana's house  

for turkey, gravy, stuffing 

and later in the day 

a ballerina of whipped cream 

twirling on pumpkin pie.

Thanksgiving is the day 

America asks for seconds

and sorts its servers 

from the served.

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and  Commonweal.  Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=

Donal Mahoney - Paddy Murphy's Wake

The priest had been there earlier and the rosary was said and relatives and friends in single file were offering condolences. "Sorry for your troubles," one by one they said, bending over Maggie Murphy, the widow silent in her rocker, a foot or so from Paddy, resplendent in his casket, the two of them much closer now than they had ever been. 

A silent guest of honor, Paddy now had nothing more to say, waked in aspic, if you will, in front of his gothic fireplace.

The moon was full this starless night and the hour was getting late and still the widow hadn't wept. Her eyes were swept Saharas and the mourners wanted tears. They had fields to plow come morning and they needed sleep, but the custom in County Kerry was that no one leaves a wake until the widow weeps.

Fair Maggie could have married any man in Kerry, according to her mother, who almost every day reminded her of that. 

"Maggie," she would say, "you should have married Mickey. His limp was not that bad," but Maggie wouldn't listen. Instead, she married Paddy, "that pestilence out walking," as her mother often called him even on a Sunday but only after Mass. 

Maggie married Paddy the day he scored the only goal the year that Kerry took the trophy back from Galway. That goal was no small thing for Ireland, Paddy would remind us all in pubs, night after night, year after year, until one of us would gag and buy him another drink. 

That goal, he'd shout, was something historians in Ireland would one day note, even if they hadn't yet, and every time he'd mention it, which was almost daily, Maggie's mother would remind her daughter once again that she should have married Mickey and had a better life. 

The final time her mother praised poor Mickey, a screaming match ensued, so loud it woke the rooster the very day her mother, feverish in bed, gurgled like a frog and died. 

This evening, though, as the wake wore on, the mourners grew more weary waiting for the tears the widow hadn't shed. Restless in his folding chair, Mickey put his bottle down and rose to give the eulogy he had needed days to memorize. 

"Folks," he said, "if all of us would holler down to Paddy now, I'm sure he'd holler back. Despite the flames and all that smoke, he'd tell us all once more that Kerry winning over Galway is all that ever mattered. We'll always have cold Paddy over there to thank for that. Ireland never had a better man. St. Patrick himself, I know, would vouch for that." 

The Widow Murphy hadn't moved all evening, but after hearing Mickey speak, she began to rock with fury as she raised a purple fist, shook it to the heavens and then began to hum her favorite dirge. The mourners all joined in and hummed along until midnight struck on the mantel clock and then, as if released by God Himself, the mourners rose, one by one, from folding chairs and paraded out beneath the moon, freed by a hurricane of the Widow Murphy's tears.






Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).

Donal Mahoney - Strangers in a Bar

Sammy had been sitting in the bar for four hours drinking his usual gin and tonic, one drink after another, and even he would admit he was soused if he could put a sentence together. He didn’t have to talk, however, since he was the only customer left and there was an hour to go before closing. All he had to do was tap on the bar twice in front of his empty glass and the bartender would give him another drink. The service was wonderful.

Then two men in trench coats and fedoras walked in and sat down a few stools away from Sammy. They ordered a couple of beers. They seemed to be concerned about something and Sammy always liked to listen in on other people’s conversations.

“We need more room,” the big man said. “We can hardly take any more people. But they keep coming down and we can’t send them anywhere else. You would think we were Las Vegas and the drinks were free."

“Where will we get more room? We’re not talking real estate here,” the little fellow said. “No one thinks this place exists anyway. They think we’re a figment of someone’s imagination. New arrivals are always surprised.”

Then the big man said, “Oh, some people know we exist but they think we only get dictators and used car salesmen. The common belief is everyone else goes upstairs right away, provided there is an upstairs. More and more people think there may be nothing at the end.” 

The little guy thought about that for a moment and said, “Well, I heard two women arguing the other day about where cats and dogs go. I know we don’t have any cats and dogs. Where would we put them? Pretty soon we’ll be getting Boomers. They’re a fussy bunch. We need more room now!”

Sammy didn’t know what to make of all of this. He wished he wasn’t drunk so he could join the conversation but all he could do was listen. The two men finally left and Sammy told himself he’d come back tomorrow night and ask the bartender who the hell those two guys were. Then he tapped on the bar twice in front of his empty glass.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).

Donal Mahoney - Laura, What's a Medical Intuitive?

The phone call came almost a year ago and Homer remembers it well. He had been out in the fields plowing and his wife came out and waved him into the house. His daughter was calling from the city. She had a good job there but she was calling with bad news. A doctor had confirmed she had stomach cancer. He said she should begin chemotherapy and radiation immediately but Laura wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do.

“After all, Dad, my medical intuitive said if I went on the Mediterranean diet, my condition could clear up and my hair wouldn’t fall out. It wouldn’t look good at work if my hair fell out.”

“Laura, what’s a medical intuitive? Is that a doctor of some kind?”

"No, Dad, a medical intuitive can tell just by talking to a sick person what’s the best thing to do. Sometimes they do it by phone, sometimes in person. They’re able to tune into your condition. Vibrations of some kind. They cost a lot but they're worth it. I’ve been talking to mine ever since I came to the city. She was right when I had a bad cough. I still have my tonsils. I hope she’s right again. I bought a book on the diet and I’m going to start on it immediately. Some good recipes if you like vegetables.”

Homer was not happy about the cancer or about the medical intuitive and he could tell that Laura had explained everything to his wife before she had called him in to talk to Laura. His wife was sitting at the kitchen table sobbing in her apron. She had been canning strawberry jam for the winter.

“Laura, this doesn’t sound too good to me,” Homer said.” I think it would be smarter to follow the doctor’s advice and maybe pray a little as well. Or eat the Mediterranean diet and follow the doctor’s advice at the same time. With cancer, chemotherapy and radiation are standard treatments. Your hair will grow back in. You can come back home and let it grow in down here. You’ve been working there long enough to get medical leave. Please think about it. There’s too much at stake here.”

Laura, however, didn’t want anything to do with chemotherapy or radiation. She was going to go on the diet and see if it worked. If not, maybe then she would try chemotherapy and radiation even if her hair fell out. And she promised her father if it did, she would come home to let her hair grow back. 

Homer never forgot that phone call. A year later, almost to the day, he repeated every word of it silently to himself on the ride from the church to the cemetery. His wife sat next to him crying. When they buried Laura, she still had all of her brilliant red hair.







Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).

Donal Mahoney - They Call it Euthanasia

We took a feral cat

we'd been feeding to the vet

when it stopped eating.

It was lying on the deck

too weak to object.

The vet said tests

would cost $400

to figure out the problem.

Or we could euthanize the cat.

That would cost less.

It was up to us, he said.

I asked him if old and sick

cats and dogs were still 

euthanized with gas

and he said no.

It’s by injection now.

They don’t feel a thing.

Perhaps that will help

if the Court decides

some day to cull

the herd of old folks.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).

Donal Mahoney - Seventeen Year Itch

Marcia was 17 the first time thousands of locusts rose from the fields of her father's farm and filled the air, sounding like zithers unable to stop. Her father was angry but Marcia loved the music the locusts made. She was in high school then and chose to make locusts the focus of her senior paper. 

At the town library she learned locusts spend 17 years deep in the soil, feeding on fluids from roots of trees that make them strong enough to emerge  at the proper time to court and reproduce. Courtship requires the males to gather in a circle and sing until the females agree to make them fathers.

Courtship and mating and laying of eggs takes almost two months and then the locusts fall from the air and die. Marcia remembers the iridescent shells on the ground shining, She was always careful not to step on them. She cried when the rain and the wind took them away. 

Now 17 years later Marcia is 34 and the locusts are back again. Her dead father can't hear them and Marcia no longer loves the music the way she did in high school. Now she stays in the house and keeps the windows closed and relies on the air-conditioner to drown out the locusts. Marcia has patience, however. She knows what will happen. She reads her Bible and sucks on lemon drops, knowing the locusts will die.

In the seventh week, the locusts fall from the air in raindrops, then torrents. "It is finished," Marcia says. She pulls on her father's boots and goes out in the fields and stomps on the shells covering the ground but she stomps carefully.

At 34 Marcia's in no hurry. Before each stomp, she names each shell Billy, John, Chuck, Terrence or Lester, the names of men who have courted her during the 17 years since high school. They all made promises Marcia loved to hear, promises she can recite like a favorite prayer. She made each man happy as best she could. They would grunt like swine the first night, some of them for many nights. But then like locusts they would disappear.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).

Donal Mahoney - Henry Showed Wendy His Paintings

Henry and Wendy Throckmorton had been married a week when Henry took Wendy to his garret 100 miles south of their estate in posh Kenilworth, a suburb of Chicago. Wendy thought she was going on a delayed honeymoon. Henry had never told her that he was a painter by avocation. She knew only that he was a successful patent attorney and had a large, profitable practice.

There was a heavy snowfall that evening and it made the trip for Wendy, looking out the window of the car, all the more beautiful. They arrived at the garret around midnight and walked up three flights of stairs in the dark. It was good that Henry had brought his flashlight. He used three keys on a long silver chain to open three locks on the steel door. Once inside the garret, Henry turned on the light with triumph.

"Voila!" he said as he turned slowly in a circle with arms outstretched. 

Wendy was certainly surprised. There were paintings all over the walls. Other paintings, half completed, sat on their easels waiting for Henry. He explained to Wendy that she was the first person to see his work--his work of a lifetime. He had never shown his work to anyone before but now that they were married, he felt she had a right to see it.

"Wendy, you are the one person I know who is qualified to see my work and I am very happy about that."

Wendy had been curator of several art collections at prestigious museums in a number of cities. As soon as she was settled in her new home, she planned to seek similar employment in Chicago, perhaps at a small private gallery so she would have less pressure and more time to make a nice home for Henry who had been a bachelor for a long time. 

Wendy was an expert in watercolors, Henry's medium of choice. With his encouragement, she walked around the garret slowly, looking at every painting on the walls and even those on the easels before she said anything.

Finally, choosing her words carefully, she told Henry his work was "interesting." She did not praise or condemn any particular painting. She spoke quietly, trying her best to say something nice when her professional assessment told her just the opposite--the work was mediocre, mundane at best. Later on, Henry thought to himself that Wendy had looked bemused after reviewing his life's work. 

Henry Throckmorton earned his living as an attorney but that was simply to buy the time necessary to paint. Before marrying Wendy he had spent weekends, holidays and vacations at his garret, painting night and day for many years. He had done well as an attorney but painting was his passion. He knew now, however, that the canvases he thought so highly of had failed to impress his young wife. 

Henry drove home alone that night and told everyone at work the next day that Wendy had left him without notice. He called her parents and cried on the telephone about her sudden departure. He begged them to ask Wendy to call him if they heard from her and he said he would call them if she called him. He asked her mother if Wendy had ever gone off on her own before and she assured him that Wendy had not. 

No one ever saw Wendy Throckmorton again. Over the years, her parents had died, still worried about Wendy. Since she had been an only child, there were no siblings to ask about her. It was obvious to the staff in Henry's office that he was in no mood to discuss her. They felt the man was brokenhearted. 

Once again, Henry was spending weekends, holidays and vacations at his garret painting in watercolors. No one since Wendy had seen his work nor had anyone else visited his garret. Paintings were still everywhere, their number increasing as a result of Henry's ever-increasing frenzy for painting. 

A wonderful cook, Henry still stored a few steaks in a small refrigerator in the kitchen but he no longer hung big cuts of beef from hooks in the walk-in freezer at the back of the garret. That freezer had been a selling point when Henry bought the place from a retired butcher many years ago. But now Henry never went into the freezer. In fact, he didn't know where he had put the keys to the locks he himself had installed on the freezer door after Wendy had disappeared. 

In addition to being good at the law and enjoying painting, Henry Throckmorton had always been handy with tools. He had hoped some day to try his hand at ice sculpture but he would have to do that outside now and not in the freezer as he had once planned. 

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had fiction and poetry published in various publications in the U.S. and elsewhere. Among them are The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, The Galway Review (Ireland), Bluepepper (Australia), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey).