©Moronic Ox Literary Journal - Escape Media Publishers / Open Books
Poetry
"Raspberry Hives"
Donal Mahoney
The ancient man
with raspberry hives
on his cheeks
since childhood
will live alone
no longer.
He’ll marry, he says,
the first woman who’ll have him.
Till now
he has wanted
to die
as he’s lived,
alone in his room
with the radio playing,
the water in the bathtub
dripping.
The drone of hours,
however, has become
the drone of years
and the ancient man
with raspberry hives
on his cheeks
since childhood
fears death will convert
his hives into pocks,
take his body
but reject his soul.
For reasons
he can’t articulate,
he believes
if he weds
the first woman
who’ll have him,
death will have reason,
for the first time,
to do the job right.
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About the author:
Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. A Pushcart Prize nominee like so many others, he has had poems published or forthcoming in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Blue Lakes Review, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Pirene's Fountain (Australia) and other publications
"The Landlord"
Donal Mahoney
When finally at 80 Sammy died
Polly gave me from the pantry packets
of dry noodle soup that Sammy
to the end drank down as supper.
Tureens of it, with swallows
from the pint I smuggled in, kept
Sammy blinking at the light
the final weeks. I lived below them
at the time and needed more than soup.
But in the parlor where they laid him out
we sat on high-back chairs amid the flowers
and marveled at how straight our Sammy lay.
Who prepared him must have brought
his gnomic back, twice at least,
full force across a knee.
"Country Cafeteria"
Donal Mahoney
The two weeks
I spent in that small town
on assignment, I saw no blacks
except for two older women
regal in every way,
hair coifed in silver gray,
working in the Country Cafeteria.
They walked like pastors’ wives
as they bused their 20 tables.
White badges on their uniforms
announced in red their names,
their years of service.
They never said a word,
not even to each other.
They just took the cups and plates away
and wiped oil tablecloths pristine.
I took three meals a day in silence there,
the only place in town to eat.
I was the stranger in a suit and tie,
a city weed among stout farmers in old coveralls
who came to town each day to note
“no rain yet” and “the corn is dyin’.”
Before each meal instead of saying Grace,
I wanted to stand and ask these ladies
as they bowed before the clutter on their tables:
If you have worked here all these years,
and lived in this town also,
where in the Name of God,
other than at home or church,
are you free to talk or laugh or sing
or clap your hands in emancipation?
