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