Donal Mahoney Poems

There beyond the shrub
the sun medallions on the grass
around a python and boar,
the python winding.
...

Ralph never planned on dying
but when he did, he was swept away
like a child's kite blown astray.
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Everyone in the neighborhood was surprised when Bill McIntyre entered the seminary to study for the priesthood. He had been dating girls since early in high school and had been engaged since graduating from college to a lovely young lady. He often spoke about wanting to have a big family since he himself had been an only child. But something happened in that relationship and Bill and his girlfriend broke up.

'I always wanted brothers, ' Bill had told his best friend, Adam Moskowitz. They had played basketball together in high school and had remained close friends, meeting at the local delicatessen every couple of weeks to wolf down corned beef sandwiches, Adam's on rye, Bill's on dark pumpernickel.
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Dad, happy to see
you're taking a nap.
I'm down at the pier
so give me a shout
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fresh graffiti on the walls
of Temple Mizpah once again
...

In the waiting room,
I squeeze
this trinity of walnuts
...

When I began writing in 1960, there were no website 'magazines.' Print journals were the only place to have poems published. Writers used typewriters, carbon paper, a white potion to cover up mistakes and "snail mail" to prepare and submit poems for publication. Monday through Friday I'd work at my day job. Weekends I'd spend writing and revising poems. Revising poems took more time than writing them and that is still the case today, decades later.

On Monday morning on the way to work, I'd sometimes mail as many as 14 envelopes to university journals and 'little magazines, ' as the latter were then called. Some university journals are still with us. Some are published in print only and others have begun the inevitable transformation by appearing in print and simultaneously on the web.
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Before he's had his morning coffee
he puts a silencer on the pistol,
goes from room to room, puts
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Want to know how
God may feel at times
about us mortals?
...

It may have been the devil himself who prompted the kids in my schoolyard back in 1947 to chant 'Patsy Foley's roly-poly from eating too much ravioli.'

At first, no one could remember who started the chant. Patsy, a sweet and ample child, was in the third grade. As happenstance would have it, I was in that same third grade, infamous already as the only boy wearing spectacles in our class. After I got the glasses, I had three schoolyard fights in three days to prove to Larry Moore, Billy Gallagher and Fred Ham that I hadn't changed a bit. You would think I would have forgotten their names by now. Not a chance. I didn't like being messed with in third grade.
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