Donal Mahoney Poems

You thought you knew her.
She thought she knew you.

Neither was true
...

For years Rocky's Diner had always done a great business for breakfast and lunch but his dinner business had fallen off recently as folks moved to the suburbs, got married, died or simply went elsewhere to eat. He thought about closing early but he had a small cadre of elderly men, many of whom had been his customers for two or three meals a day, and Rocky didn't know where else they might go to eat. They were all single now for different reasons—divorced, widowed, never married or deserted by a wife who had become fed up. Most were in their late 70s and early 80s and not renowned for their civility. They were a crotchety bunch but Rocky liked them all. He himself was in his late 60s, happily married, and didn't have to worry about money, thanks in large part to loyal customers like these elderly men, some of whom had been eating at his diner for decades.

Many of them would arrive for dinner—or supper, as most of them called it- at 6 p.m., their unofficial appointed hour for the last meal of the day, and depending on their mood, they would either take a stool alone at the counter or pile into one of the red vinyl booths. In a booth, they hoped to be joined by others who might also have spent the day alone, watching television, reading the obituaries or maybe playing solitaire.
...

An ancient couple,
he's a hunchback,
she's a gnome,
in the kitchen play
...

It's six below and so much snow
this January midnight.
Sunday's gone
and Monday's turning.
...

You were a good boy,
following your parents' advice,
never going out in the rain.
...

Not far from Ferguson
in South St. Louis,
a Bosnian man
was murdered days ago
...

Two ancient men
named Ruben Kohn
by happenstance
had sleeping rooms
...

For years Ollie worked
late into the night
ringing up his sales
of wine and liquor
...

During a long marriage
Wally told Millie
over and over
time after time
...

When Barney Murphy married Blanche O'Brien, he told her almost every day from the wedding on that she was apricots and peaches, an orchard that was his alone to wander, plucking fruit as he saw fit, all of it ripe and juicy, something he would savor for the rest of his life. Blanche, a shy woman, really liked the way Barney could talk. He made nonsense sensible, she told her parents. Blanche was a very happy wife.

From the sixth month on during her first pregnancy, Blanche would ask Barney every day to pat her watermelon. When it finally burst, a boy popped out, and then a girl right after the boy, and then another boy right after the girl. Blanche had given birth to triplets within minutes of each other, lovely infants, all three of them plump and crowned with hair that ran in rivulets of curls.
...