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POETRY BY: Donal
Mahoney Diamond of Jello From my stool in the diner I watch
the old woman with elm tree arms command the big booth in back and roar for a menu, take a half hour to read it before placing her order. Watching her eat, I realize life for her is a dollop of whip cream, a twirling ballerina, on a diamond of Jello. I raise my water glass in a silent toast. Bravo, I whisper.
I wish her good cheer.
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An Eighth of a Lemon
For Martha in the early
years life was recess, nothing more. She knelt on asphalt, quartered oranges for kittens who never lost stringed mittens, whose London Bridges never fell down. For Martha now, life’s Parkview Manor where a woman in white, three times a day, bleeds an eighth of a lemon into her tea.
Bottle into Glass Beneath the bowling-alley bar marquee the rain tonight hammers off the concrete. Inside, beer falls bottle into glass. Beyond the bar, bright lights reveal a Bowler’s day: fluorescent shirts red, yellow, green, and everywhere a roar so loud one can barely hear the pins shocked by balls centuries in transit.
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Cleats
The way I walk these days the tips of my soles and the edge of my heels wear out too fast for a man with children. So I tell Rocco, cobbler nonpareil, “Tack on four cleats, two in front, two in back” so I can walk home between two shopping bags and whatever pride I can summon. All four blocks of concrete, I’ll keep those cleats from clicking. Ten years ago I wore cleats as big as doubloons; I struck them so hard sparks flew from the sidewalk. You bet all the girls in my high school knew a man was walking behind them.
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Donal Mahoney has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas
Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Revival (Ireland), The Beloit Poetry
Journal, The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Davidson Miscellany, The Goddard Journal, The Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine,
The Road Apple Review and other publications.
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Collateral Damage For the entire office a death like his coming as it has the day before the weekend of the Fourth complicates the holiday for everyone. It makes things difficult for all: the wake the other matters.
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