An Email on Sunday
Some emails
are more difficult
to receive
from a child
long out of college
the daughter who writes
her cancer is back
but the doctor says
with chemo and surgery
things should be fine
and all the while
the father wonders
why she didn’t call
at midnight and let
the telephone scream
hysterically in the night
to deliver the news
a computer is too
cold a messenger
to deliver hot terror
on Sunday morning
while machine guns
of sleet drive
bullets too bright
into the ground
Herbie Gets Emails
When Herbie gets an email
from one of his sons,
it's never a problem.
Usually it's about the game
one of them has tickets for
or a chance to go hunting.
But when he gets an email
from one of his daughters,
it's different because
her dead mother's face
is a watermark talking
behind the message.
Dead for a decade,
she wants to settle
an argument
Herbie can't remember,
an argument neighbors
can no longer hear.
This time the police
won't be coming
which makes Herbie thankful
as he tries to sound cheerful
in his reply to his daughter
who's still as beautiful
as her mother back when.
Cats and Possums Pay No Taxes
Beautiful lady in the checkout lane
is spotted by Roscoe, a wealthy man
wandering in Walmart. He admires
her chocolate hair, bonbon eyes,
vanilla creme complexion, a walk
a runway model would envy.
This woman Roscoe thinks
he would marry until she turns
a profile and he sees her nose
is not unlike the possum snout
he saw last night on his deck,
a possum with a ski-slope snout
snuffling around for cat-food cans
he puts out at night for the feral cats
he favors because feral cats are
entrepreneurs who pay no taxes.
Possums pay no taxes either but
Roscoe can’t abide a ski-slope snout.
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
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