CASUALTY; 2 In Bed      [Stefanie Bennett]

 

 

One dreams of solid elements -

White cliffs, waves, battleships.

Sees himself as Birdman, rasping

Closed skies and meeting the Maker.

Night-trends elevate this...

 

The other lies fretful, photostating

Old faults; dipping 18 carat vows

Black though proofs present

Are already glassed within

Sheep-abandoned pastures...

 

She thinks perhaps she’ll re-endorse

Animal Farm.

 

He falls from his middling

Clutching the alarm.

Old People

These are old people

retired and driving slowly

from small apartments

in economy cars 

getting out on canes 

and walkers with

hearing aids you can see

attired in the best 

Goodwill has to offer

arriving between 1 and 3 

weekday afternoons

at Mid-America Buffet

eating their fill for $5.00 off

piling their plates with

chicken, meat loaf

salads galore, veggies

from childhood

green beans, carrots 

eaten in a rush as kids

listening to Fibber McGee

and Molly on the radio

eaten slowly now 

by folks who make it

on crackers and snacks

and one meal a day

this one for $5.00 off

at Mid-America Buffet.

Donal Mahoney 

Show or Tell

Some poets show.

Others tell.

Poets who show

use metaphor, simile,

rhythm and stories

to paint a picture

readers can see

then decide for themselves. 

Poets who tell 

are linear folk who

mean well but yell

so readers won’t miss

the cure for society’s problems.

Their straight lines are neon 

so readers won’t have to think. 

Donal Mahoney

Oddfellow

Homer’s never owned a gun,

thinks they should be banned

along with bombs and missiles.

Doesn’t need them in the river

that flows between his mind

and his emotions

where every now and then

he pushes someone in 

for some untoward remark.

He points to the sky first,

says that’s where heaven is

and gives a push

and waits to hear the scream

and then the splash.

His notebook says

some folks float away,

are never found, flotsam

among the jetsam.

Others he dives in to save

so he can push them in again

to save another day.

Donal Mahoney

THE MINDER      [Stefanie Bennett]

 

 

 

There’s not much I can do about

The Sandman’s removal, child.

It’s said he went,

Willingly, into

The maelstrom’s fortified swirl

Wearing a frock-coat

- Appropriately iridescent, with

Staff and cap to match.

 

Would I pull a fast one... ?

The theatrical’s

Where you find it; and

It won’t be found

Akin to the deranged menu

Of The Brothers Grimm.

What’s that!

My son –, let’s skip

 

The Inquisition [I’ve misplaced

The text]. Tonight

I sport the orator’s

Flip-flops...

Both pair.

Up Periscope

Tim was long dead

but Opal had the story

in her diary and kept it

in a safe deposit box

all these years

after World War II.

She would die soon 

and was afraid the kids

might read it so she asked

a neighbor’s son to drive her 

to the bank so she could

read it one more time

before she burned it.

In her diary Opal wrote

that after three months 

in his submarine

Tim got shore leave

and called and told her

he’d be home that night.

She asked him what 

he’d like for dinner.

Although the war

was over, steak

was still scarce.

Pork and chicken

were possible.

Not to worry, Tim said.

Just pull the blinds 

and stand on 

the dining room table

and sway while Tim

sat in the captain’s chair.

She could take her time.

No reason now to rush.

The war was over but 

he’d probably want

a second helping.

Donal Mahoney

Rewrite Man

At newspapers in the Sixties

typewriters reigned and rang.

Computers were a fantasy.

Being a “rewrite man” back then

was a dream job if one enjoyed 

“improving” other people’s copy

rather than writing one's own.

Harry Murphy loved that job.

Harry said “rewrite" let him

adopt thousands of children

rather than give birth to one.

Far less painful, Harry said.

He was the midwife between 

reporters in the field 

who scurried after facts 

and the editor who said 

a story was fit to print.

Reporters phoned in stories

in the age before laptops

and Harry the Bard wrote them.

Harry’s motto was simple:

Even an obituary deserves 

a touch of music, a polka for a Pole,

a reel or jig for an Irishman.

Donal Mahoney

Ancient Paradox Alive Today

After two thousand years 

we still have folks

who blame the Jews

for killing Christ even though

Pilate the Gentile could have 

let him go and kept Barabbas.

This would have meant  

no crucifixion, no resurrection.

Heaven’s gates would still

be closed—perhaps forever,

thus making it impossible 

for anyone to blame the Jews 

for doing what they had to do

for Heaven’s gates to open.

And those who blame the Jews 

would still be waiting for a Savior

the way the Jews await the Messiah

they believe will come.

Donal Mahoney

Presidential Debates 2016

I fall asleep in my recliner

after a hard day at the computer

chasing my mouse.

My wife shakes me awake

and says I’ve been hollering,

asks if I had a nightmare.

She says I have never before

hollered in my sleep.

I tell her I was attending

the presidential debates in 2016

and behind the microphones I saw

Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul. 

Americans have a choice, I tell her.

Listen to Bernie and Rand in 2016 or 

take a plane and buy a tent in Nepal. 

Donal Mahoney

Wives and Girl Friends

A good reason to get married,

Tim told me before he died,

is you need a driver to take you

home from a colonoscopy.

When cancer runs in the family

and three relatives have had it

colonoscopies become frequent.

You get used to drinking the potion

the day before the exam but

depending on the test results

you may get the same day,

driving yourself home isn't

the wisest thing to do

no matter how long you may live.

A wife will take you home, Tim said.

A girlfriend might do it once

but then she will find someone else.

Tim had reasons to know.

Donal Mahoney

Misanthrope at Sunset Manor

Even as a child

Charles couldn’t forgive other children

not for something they had done 

but rather for who they were.

They were inferior and couldn’t help it,

his parents both agreed.

Charles couldn’t stand any of them.

This continued his entire life.

Charles almost married a woman 

he had hired only to discover later 

she wasn’t perfect, no better than 

the little people he had hired to 

wrap and mail thousands of shirts

manufactured in Bangladesh.

He sold the company at 80

and retired a multimillionaire.

Charles never liked himself either

but he had fewer flaws, he thought,

than anyone he had ever met.

Now in old age he trolls the halls

of Sunset Manor in an electric wheelchair

other residents on canes and walkers 

call his tank, making sharp turns while

looking for someone he might like.

Donal Mahoney

       

Traffic Jam

By Jonel Abellanosa

 

It takes just one

Visionary disrupter

To take his guitar

From the backseat

And turn anger and frustration

Into a celebration of songs and dancing,

The traffic into a jam.

 

Different Strokes

By Jonel Abellanosa

 

The entrepreneurial use stands,

alchemy between meat and coal,

the wind for irresistible smells,

to empty fast food lanes and decorate

our sidewalks with bystanders

 

The one in power

uses unemployment

and rising costs of living.

 

Independence Day Celebrations

By Jonel Abellanosa

 

so much

depends

 

upon William’s

suggestion

 

to put his “red wheel

barrow”

 

in the middle of

the City square

Country Doctor

A doctor for decades,

he provides services 

not available nearby.

Clients drive miles

from farms and towns

seeking his care.

He is always busy, 

assisted by two nurses 

six days a week.

He loves animals

and feeds tramp dogs 

and feral cats daily

in the open field

behind his office.

If he sees a bug

in his office 

everything stops 

while he carries it outside.

Only then does he return

and relieve another client

of her fetus.

Donal Mahoney

       

Signs in Windows

In 1920 he came on a boat 

from Ireland and found

his way through Ellis Island.

He found a room 

in a boarding house

catering to his kind and

went looking for a job

but found instead signs

in windows saying 

“No Irish Need Apply.”

A cemetery asked him to

dig graves and lower the dead.

In America today

there are no signs like that.

Black and brown 

apply and whites 

sometimes hire them.

My father was white.

But in 1920 his brogue

was a long rope that

almost lynched him. 

Donal Mahoney

Before Michael Brown and Freddie Gray

Who celebrates 

the birthday of a tree?

Birds and squirrels, perhaps,

but not Michael Brown 

and not Freddie Gray

and not Rufus Jackson, who was

hung from a weeping willow in 1863.

Rufus stole an apple pie

cooling on a window sill,

a farmer’s wife said. 

She told her husband about it 

when he came in from threshing.

An uncle found Rufus

and cut him from the tree.  

His family buried him 

behind a willow not too far 

from a barn in Mississippi 

where two men took Emmitt Till, 

a boy from the city, in 1958. 

Both men said Emmitt had

whistled at a white man’s wife. 

The two men beat Emmitt, 

gouged an eye out, shot him 

in the head, tossed his body 

in the Tallahatchie River, not far 

from the grave of Rufus Jackson,

said to have stolen an apple pie, then 

hung from a weeping willow in 1863.

Donal Mahoney

It’s Not for the Usher to Ask

Many churches today 

have a food pantry that never

had a pantry before.

I attend a church like that.

Some folks are well-fixed, 

others poor, most betwixt.

Some had money before

but not enough now to pay 

the mortgage and then buy food

so the pantry helps them

the same way it helps clients

it has helped for years.

Some folks in the pews quietly

support the pantry with 

checks and canned goods

enabling the nouveau poor

to stand in line with the 

forever poor on Mondays. 

A neighborhood baker slips 

into the church Sunday mornings

just prior to the end of service

and quietly stacks his trays

of unsold bread in the dark foyer. 

He says nothing and disappears.

No one seems to know

who he is but the hungry

love his bread and word

of its excellence has reached

the woman who leaves church early

and always grabs two loaves

of French baguettes and is

out in the parking lot long

before anyone else and

drives off in a red Mercedes.

Perhaps she’s on unemployment, 

low on food stamps or is still

making payments on the car.

It’s not for the usher to ask.

I simply hold the door. 

Donal Mahoney

    

 Parallels in Failures

 

     Parallel parking's "out,"
The same skills declared measured by a reverse two point turn around,
     With much more room to maneuver, yeah, right!
So another reason for dropping it from the exam must be found.

     Lines too long - eliminate repeat test takers,
In this "click, click" world, they simply can't come back ... and wait,
     To these kids who basically got trophies for tinkling,
Helicopter parents didn't train them for the high failure rate.

     Isn't licensure supposed to be about road readiness and protecting the public?
And not how little service the government can provide and how quickly it can start to collect a fee...
     ...For that, there are police traps and speed cameras and parking tickets!
Why add to the already horrible driving in the not so rural DMV?

     Is it a coincidence that Maryland became the latest to make this "revision,"
Just after the "double taxation" Supreme Court ruling went against the state?
     Make some money up - or it is a prescient grab based on thinking...
...That a total tech takeover of cars will sooner rather than later be an accomplished fate?

     An automobile is analog, no matter how it's being operated,
Breaches, glitches, CRASHES - computers are fallible, too,
     The population's trending urban, perhaps "the Forgoing Fifteen" are the flunkies,
Making any "achievement" too easy may be a decision long term we come to rue.

 

 

 

Karen Ann DeLuca

             Between Orders

You need to understand

how something unremarkable can happen…

A bar room filled with happy heads,

their mouths unhinged with laughter

and talk of the town.

It’s a soft night in a far county,

a fine funk in the air.

At one table women are toying with emotion.

They are the fishers of men;

men jabbering about sports and war and motors.

And behind the bar is Dan, a man with a face

like a shotgun about to go off accidentally.

“How ‘bout those such and suches.”

a voice sounds out over the hubbub.

“We’ll never see their like again.”

another voice calls back in response,

before it’s lost like a leaf in autumnal waters.

And just then, or so the legend goes,

the front door of this fine establishment blows open.

Only the keenest seem to notice,

the world rocking in the coddled night.

Only the sharpest wits take any comfort

in the presence of the unnecessary.

Bruce Mcrae

                    Giving Thanks

Thank you for the sorrows,

so I might see myself more clearly,

a small figure in the hardscrabble,

one of any number of cogs,

another version of the many others.

Thank you for the million sadnesses.

They come like cold rain

on an uninhabitable planet.

They fall like angels cast out of paradise.

Like heads into a basket.

More despairs? You shouldn’t have.

I’ll keep them in the cellar

where no light can touch them,

where they’ll take root in the earth,

black flowers in blacker dirt,

unshadows of a faith minus redemption.

You’ve made grief a present.

Like the drowning man

being handed a stone,

I can’t thank you enough.

              I can’t thank you.

            Bruce Mcrae 

                                     Unsure

Is that a subhuman rummaging in the thicket

or the ghost-dog of things past?

What’s that lurking by the gate of the womb?

The stereotypical apparitional banshee?

A heretic’s spleen in aluminum foil?

Neptune’s brightly feathered lure?

This is either incense smoke or a funnel web.

Moonflowers, or a weathervane.

A centaur coughing among the bulrushes

or the waning of an intense longing.

Perhaps this is what the darkness writes for you –

odes to the morning star’s departure.

You feel your way around in the bramble.

It feels like a rune stone or diplodocus egg.

No, it’s the pendant Sisyphus misplaced.

It’s the headstone of your mother’s mother.

Mid-day arrayed in midnight’s blackness.

The last wolf of Iberia.

Time stutters, stalls, staggers.

You seem sure you’ve been here before,

but you’ve never been here before.

You lie among the ammonites and trilobites.

Face down in the earth

everything looks like heaven.

Bruce Mcrae

                     Years And Years

The lithe years, to be admired

for their rare vintage.

The mumbling years, yet to come.

And this last year, squatting

like a horse sitting on its hind,

awkward and unnatural.

A year of bone china breaking

and cultivated bloodstone.

A year rattled and rumpled,

my time spent ducking under

a low beam and falling branches,

the others, in their fine apparel,

living sit-com lives of operatic splendour,

affording sentiments like greeting cards,

the likes of I a chimneysweep,

a poacher on the outskirts of civility,

the one they send for to be sent away.

Who calls, but they will not answer.

Bruce Mcrae

Pistons in Her Haunches

It's a 50th anniversary dinner

for Bernie and Blanche at the Elk's Hall. 

After dessert Blanche grabs the mike

and primes the crowd by announcing,

"Fifty year's we've been married

and Bernie's never had a sorry day." 

Then Bernie grabs the mike and says

"The nights have been wonderful, too.

Despite her orthopedic shoes, Blanche

still has pistons in her haunches." 

In fact, after all these years, Bernie has 

but one complaint: Blanche never 

gets to the point in any conversation. 

It's up to Bernie to decipher the code.

Early every morning Blanche and Bernie

sit in their recliners and sip coffee. 

Blanche stares into space and then

jots down on a legal pad everything 

Bernie must do before their lovely 

Victorian house falls down.

Bernie in the meantime reads  

the obituaries with one eye

and watches Blanche with the other

and waits for her head to rear back,

a mule ready to bray a prologue 

Chaucer would envy.

Many times Bernie has asked Blanche 

to give him the bottom line first.

"Tell me up front what you want me to do 

and then fill in the details," he tells her.

But with no bottom line in any conversation, 

Blanche makes Bernie feel as though 

a python is winding around his chest. 

"I know what the python wants,"

Bernie says, "and he'll be quicker." 

After 50 years of marriage,

Bernie says meandering by Blanche

in conversation is a small complaint. 

He'll never have a sorry day as long as

Blanche has pistons in her haunches

because every now and then, 

despite stenosis of the spine, 

Bernie likes to bounce off the ceiling.

That bounce, he says, is why 

he married Blanche in the first place.

Donal Mahoney

The Capitalist Way

It is easier for a camel to pass

through the eye of a needle

than for one who is rich 

to enter the kingdom of God, 

Jesus told his disciples.

Centuries later Warren

an investor in America

heard about this and 

asked Fu a manufacturer

in China to make 

millions of 12-foot needles.

Then he asked Ahmad 

a bedouin in Oman

to breed smaller camels.

Look for the IPO on Wall Street. 

Donal Mahoney

Vertigo with a Touch of Syncope

I look in the mirror and I'm not there.

Where did I go? I don't know 

so I look around and see my wife 

with the dogs and kids. 

Not one of them sees me. 

Recliner's empty. So's the bed.

I must be somewhere; I always am.

Barber claims he saw me yesterday

and I won't need another trim 

for a month or more.

Dentist says I have no teeth to fix,

that I should keep gummin' it,

so why would I go there?

Maybe I'll call my sister who knows 

nothing about me now. 

We haven't talked in 20 years. 

When no one's in the mirror

they sometimes find me 

behind the couch chompin'

on a Dagwood sandwich

but this time it's different.

Where am I? Heaven? Hell? 

Somewhere in between?

I hear Hoagy on the piano

playing "Georgia on My Mind." 

Text me on a cloud 

if he plays "Stardust."

The drinks will be on me 

for everyone in the house.

 

Donal Mahoney