Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Donal Mahoney- Two Poems


The Widow Next Door

Every Saturday 
when the sun is out
and it's hotter than Hades

Monica next door 
raises her garage door
early in the morning 

and leaves it up 
long past noon as if 
Herm will walk out

at any minute 
oily and greasy
needing to clean up  

the way he used to 
every Saturday
for 30 years until 

liquor ate his liver.
At night Monica
can still hear  

the tall Marine
fingering Taps 
over Herman's grave.



First Day on Parole

Sometimes a person
can go too far,
Mickey said,
two stools over
downing another beer,
his first day on parole.
Someone like that 
cops can find dead,
he said, after 
newspapers start
littering the lawn.

A bullet in the temple
that no one hears
because of a silencer,
he pointed out,
is sometimes 
the culprit.

Such a good person,
the neighbors say
about the deceased,
and that may be true,
Mickey admitted,
but sometimes a person,
even a nice person, 
can go too far,

say the wrong thing
to the wrong person
at the wrong time
and take a bullet
in the temple,
Mickey said,
because it's hard  
to put a cobra 
under a bed.  

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

No comments:

Post a Comment