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

       

UNION................  [Stefanie Bennett]

 

 

Who cares anymore, Hemmingway, you

Grizzly old bugger – if

You pay homage to the seas or snow?

 

Who cares, Dylan Thomas!

Who cares, Robert Frost!

Who cares, Neruda!

You’re all of you – missing – and

Too quiet for comfort.

 

Who writes the odes –.

Novels the centuries –.

What’s kidnapped

                       Henry Miller...

What’s white-washed

                       Paul Celan...

The bookshops are short

On Proust: Tolstoy’s

Out of stock –.

 

Who cares anymore about what’s

Written? Who bothers

To bother at all?

If it comes down to it – the art

Of itself is scratching

At death’s door; closed circuit

TV has told us that.

 

Who cares anymore, Hemmingway,

You father of the heavy-weights!

There are flags of convenience

In the great hall of words – so

Who now assigns

And designs the fates?

Who cares about

                          The caring...

The Parish Carnival

That's Bernie's wife on the carousel

laughing and waving her arms.

Once again she won't get off 

even though Bernie is yelling

next to the concession stand

jumping around in his wheel chair.

He's finished his cotton candy

and wants to go home. 

He probably has to pee.

He never goes anywhere 

except to the parish carnival. 

He loves the cotton candy.

He says it's the same as when 

he was a kid years ago 

before he fell out of the tree. 

He needs Stella more than ever now

to push his wheel chair and she does

except when she comes to the carnival 

and gives old Bernie a big plume 

of cotton candy and hops on the carousel

laughing and waving her arms 

once a summer every year.

Donal Mahoney

The Only Place to Go in Tipperary 

Father Kelly has always claimed

the only place to go in Tipperary

once you're dead is Eagan's Mortuary.

Father Kelly says Eagan lays a client out

as if a body were a mackerel from the sea

glistening in the bottom of a boat 

once the mad thrashing is over.

Father Kelly has always claimed 

a dead mackerel deserves a nap

before the flames of hell take over.

The late Tommy Dugan arrived at Eagan's

a day or so after he'd been shot 

and Eagan laid him out perfectly 

with both eyes open and a plastic 

booger peeking from his nose,

a cosmetic touch Tommy had requested

when he came to Eagan's the week before, 

chomping on an unlit panatela.

Tommy came that day to make 

final arrangements, as they say. 

That same day Tommy asked if he could be 

waked in Eagan's finest casket upside down, 

his pants pulled down around his knees 

and a sign across his arse saying "Kiss this!"

as a final salute to his mother-in-law.

But the law in Tipperary specifies

no sign of any kind in any casket so 

Tommy settled for the plastic booger in his nose.

He knew his mother-in-law would curse it 

at the family viewing prior to the wake.

At Eagan's you can make arrangements 

years before you die and Eagan guarantees 

he'll lay you out the way you specify 

provided everything's within the law, of course.

But Tommy Dugan's widow swears 

Eagan must have been possessed to put 

a plastic booger in a dead man's nose. 

Rosie Dugan can't believe her sober Tommy

would ever ask for anything like that.

But after Mass on Sunday friends remind her

Father Kelly has always claimed

the only place to go in Tipperary

once you're dead is Eagan's Mortuary.

Father Kelly says Eagan lays a client out

as if a body were a mackerel from the sea

glistening in the bottom of a boat 

once the mad thrashing is over.

Father Kelly has always claimed 

a dead mackerel deserves a nap

before the flames of hell take over.

Donal Mahoney

Veterans Cemetery

Families come

on Memorial Day

depending on the weather;

otherwise the Fourth of July, 

if it’s not too hot.

You can hear them coming,

adults in the rear,

reminiscing and talking,

children who can read

announcing the names

on the stones until they 

discover the right one. 

Then they shout.

Adults bring flowers, 

placing them softly

in front of the stones 

near our heads.

Children stick little 

flags from parades

in our waistlines.

Some ladies bring towels

and wipe down the stones;

others towelettes to remove

gunk from the lettering. 

All mean well and we 

appreciate the visit and wish 

we could say something.

It’s a thrill to hear voices.

Otherwise it's lawn mowers,

leaf blowers, snow plows 

the rest of the year.

Donal Mahoney

       

Homemade Whipped Cream

did not get made tonight for my mini lava

cakes, paleo-diet-friendly treats for PMS,

because the holder for the nitrous oxide

bullet was missing from the box. You are

outside building a chicken coup

so that I can have hormone-free eggs

for this new menu that is annoying

everyone in a house full of carb lovers.

Things that do not go unnoticed:

how you give me everything I mention

wanting, construct from wood

first one, then another deck to make

my swimming pool something more

of an oasis, to make a home

for foul to roost and produce perfect

eggs. I am ovulating twice a month,

shedding my unfertilized yolk, bleeding

too little to ease the twisting pain.

My sons are growing like the clover

that has taken over the bed

of lilies, their orange strangling

on too little sun, too much rain.

Our gladioli rotted in the ground, never stood

a chance of reaching vertical, purple

blooms that stretched skyward last year,

a distance that seemed so short,

so perfectly possible then.

The Road to Wraparound Road

is a street cornered by twenty-something’s

caught in the crosswalk of adult and childhood,

an expectant, entitled, self-centered populous

that does not know the difference between

questions and their answers, cannot recognize

the forest for the fallen trees. Big pictures

elude them as they dance from one diagnosis

to the next. Collectively, our children are called

clients, cases, cause for complaint.

We pass the most sacred of gifts

to hands that know nothing of loss.

We Meet Again in the Middle of the Night

Two strangers who have forgotten

what skin feels like on skin in the dead

of winter, warmth to share, steal, forgotten

the way two people can fit together, fruit

can taste on hungry tongues. I have

waited the length of four loves and twice

as many bodies to find you. Here you are

mine to discover tonight, forget tomorrow.

April Salzano

SPELLCRAFT          [Stefanie Bennett]

 

 

Forget the shale and thorn-tree.

That boulder

Just lay there

                    Static

Between the okra

And the eggplant

                           Until

Besotted smoke-plumes

And an eruption

Scuttled

Around the bend like

A leap year’s

Psychosis...

 

Hi-ho –, Sisyphus!

The worst

Is over –.

Young Man on a Bad Trip

The stench came first,

the young man remembers.

It was as if someone had

grabbed him by the ankles, 

turned him upside down

and dunked him in a latrine.

Not good, he says.

Then all the hissing 

and the forked tongues

only he could see, 

flickering as if vipers were 

slithering around him.

Very bad.

A nurse told him 

he was out of it for days,

yelling and cursing

jumping out of bed 

running around.

It took three orderlies

to hold him down.

All he remembers is 

the stench and hissing.

When he came out of it

he thanked a priest

his parents had called 

when doctors said they

could only sedate him. 

The priest came back 

the next day and asked 

if he wanted to pray.

He told the priest 

he didn't believe in God

never mind Satan. 

The young man said

the problem was a guy 

had sold him bad stuff.

Simple as that.

But if it happens again,

he hoped the priest 

would come back,

light his candles

and work his magic.

He’d appreciate the help.

Donal Mahoney 

All Aboard

Next to me on the train

going home to the suburbs

is another guy stuck in a suit 

reading his paper,

a normal-looking guy

who suddenly says

it’s terrible, what’s happening

in Syria and Iraq, 

terrorists killing people.

Then he says if he believed 

what the terrorists believe

he wouldn’t care either 

whether he died in battle.

If 77 virgins were waiting for him,

he’d be happy to die

a martyr for the cause,

but since he’s an atheist

he knows no one is waiting.  

Then he looks at me 

and asks if I'm a believer.

I’m a lot bigger than he is 

so I say I’m a Catholic,

and he says if he believed

what Catholics believe—

that Jesus Christ,

the Son of God, is in a wafer

waiting in that little house 

in the middle of the altar--

he wouldn’t walk into church,

he would crawl up the aisle 

every Sunday and lie there,

face down, praying.

He asks if I get his drift, 

shaking his paper.

I say I certainly do, but 

Catholics know what they have

and don’t like making a scene.

It’s in their genes from the time

they spent in the catacombs

praying not to be killed.

He says he understands

the importance of propriety

but says if Christ is God 

and is on that altar, how can 

Catholics just sit there,

mannequins in a pew,

standing and kneeling 

once in awhile to avoid 

clots in their legs.

I agree that’s a good question.

Finally he yells,

loud enough for all to hear:

For Christ’s sake, 

the next time you go to church,

act like he’s there

and do something!

He shakes his paper again. 

The train rolls on 

and there’s a loud moment of silence.

The man has a point, I say to myself.

Finally I say I’ve enjoyed talking

and have learned a lot

but the next stop is mine.

I have to get off.

Donal Mahoney

THE YARDS      [Stefanie Bennett]

 

 

Hubris has its own analytical

Empty hammock

That commands

A regency affair –,

Impeccable lawn

And hedge height –,

In-ground pond

And systematic lolly-water

Circumnavigating

Nightshade salad greens

And what-nots...

 

Sipping an imagined

Rose’, humbuggery’s

Commonality

Is a cane-toad gnome

That croaks

A recreated

Folksy rumour

As poverty’s daylight

Rain

       Skims

The fringes...

The soak-holes.