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
...

When I get home
things will be the same.
I haven't changed.
...

Monsanto still has problems
after the carnage caused
by Agent Orange.
People continue to decay.
...

Walking very slowly, ancient Wally's
right behind his ancient Molly who's
stepping down the garden path,
her first time out in weeks,
...

It’s pretty simple, really.
The world will end
whether we believe
the Bible is a myth or truth.
...

Years ago they came from many places
to study writing at a university
in the middle of America
surrounded by lush corn fields.
...

You have the back rent
and come home from work
and find everything in a mountain
out on the lawn with the kids
...

She walks the rack of bright frocks
as her husband, an Angus aging,
paws at the carpet behind her.
She wants the right dress
...

This evening when I return to the hotel
I see in my pigeonhole
Angela's writing
on a yellow envelope.
...

Sixty years ago,
the two of us rode tricycles
up a little hill
behind our school.
...

Wilbur's always lived
in the navel of society,
lost in the lint
of the middle class.
...

The older I get the more I realize
the importance of getting things done
before your mother announces another
...

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.
...

We all know the story but who'll believe it?
Big Bang creates something from nothing
but who struck the match is a mystery.
...

When Danny Murphy was in kindergarten, just about every Saturday afternoon in autumn, he would go down to the basement and listen to the Notre Dame game with his father. That was back in the 1940s when Notre Dame had great teams. Few teams beat Notre Dame back then.

'How come Notre Dame wins all the time, Dad, ' little Danny would ask his father.
...

Where did it go?
I really don't know.
I lost it weeks ago
in the middle of the night.
...

In this college town
three girls of Spring are fresh bread
brown before the noon of May.
...

Back in 1957, kissing Carol Ann behind the barn
in the middle of a windswept field of Goldenrod
with a sudden deer watching was very special,
let me tell you. Back then, bobby sox, poodle skirts
...

When the next emperor dies
and arrives in Hades
there will be great applause
...