Dad

The two Gibraltars in the yard
never were delivered.
They have always been there.
The twenty years I lived there

the neighbors never said a word.
Their shrieks would shatter both
if they could see them.
The redwood fence my father built

is tall enough to cover his.
It will be tall enough, he swears,
in time to cover mine.
My father says before he dies

he'll sell his own Gibraltar
and leave the house, the yard,
the redwood fence to me
to guarantee that I keep mine.

poem by Donal Mahoney
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The Whole Thing Over With

From her side of the bed
the wife suggests he get dressed,
go out in the night and
purchase a piece. She's

not in the mood. Or
if he must, he can
go ahead, stick it in,
shoot it off, and get

the whole thing over with.
She doesn't care any more
where he pours it
so long as he's quiet

and doesn't wake the kids.
Too tired to dress,
he sticks it in, explodes,
rolls off, finally spent.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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On the Road to Chicago

I sit on the Water Tower waiting
chapped hands in a visor over my eyes
looking toward Durham

hoping I see
you in that gossamer gown
on the road to Chicago.

I don't care if you stop
by Confederate streams
to pick phallic rocks

so long as you rise
release all your hair
and float on to Chicago.

No more will I sit
on the Water Tower waiting.
I'd rather go blind

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Last Irish Christening

We christened Megan
Catholic today
just as we had,
years ago, Sean and Nora.
Afterward my wife and I,
with relatives and friends,
talked and joked as Megan slept
through drinks and barbecue
Father fixed behind the phlox
in Mother's garden.
That was Sunday.
Now, on Monday,
Sue and I begin
another week of work
and all the years
we'll have to wait
before we'll know
if Megan swings
the razor of good reason.
We need to know

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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My Therapist's a Lady

It's all so simple now,
yet it took 30 years
to begin to understand.
It's as though someone
stole the primer I had
and gave me another
in my own language.

It's because you are
who you are
that I've begun
to become who I am.

That sounds too dramatic.
All you did, really, was scream
when you opened the bathroom door,
saw me wrapped in a towel,
standing at attention on a mat,
waiting in my thirtieth year
for the steam to clear

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Big Meeting at the Corporate Office

When a young woman like that
sails into the conference room,
all masts billowing,
there's nothing the men
around the table can do
except take a breath

and wait for her
to settle in her chair,
open her laptop
and fuss for a moment
with some errant hair

before she fixes her stare
on the podium to wait
for the chairman to arrive
and take it from there

if he possibly can.
The chairman won't know

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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All I Did Was Admire Her Aloud

"Quiet, please, " I tell her,
"I want to hear the music."
She is sitting next to me again,
this time on a paisley couch,
a woman in a lime bikini I met
only this morning sprawled
on the Morse Avenue Beach.
All I did was admire her aloud,
not recognize her age, and an hour later
she brought me home with her.
Now she is curling into me again
and moaning at a remarkable pitch.
Finally she spits into my neck
what it's all about
this time and every time
"Honey…I am…coming."

poem by Donal Mahoney
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Let Her Bloom

The first time a man meets her,
his lids flicker,
an appropriate reaction.

The first time a woman meets her,
her eyes pop out and coil on her forehead,
another appropriate reaction.

Who can blame either?
Today, who buys the canard
about the true, the good, the beautiful

in theory or in a woman?
Let them watch her as I did.
Let them frisk her for flaws

that will allow them to live
as they are, as they were,
as I was when I met her.

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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Meeting Dad Again

Thirty years later, Dad came back
and we met for Ham and Yams at Toffenetti's.
Pouring his tea, he told me he had
to restore power once
at a newspaper warehouse
and the storm broke again
and the lightning cracked his ladder.
He spent the whole day, he said,
sitting in that dark warehouse,
waiting for the lightning to stop
and for the truck to bring a new ladder.
He had a great time, he said,
sitting next to a flickering lantern
and reading for hours the Sunday comics
printed and stacked
six weeks in advance.

poem by Donal Mahoney
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So Fingertips Kiss

Five kids, eight years.
And then one day my wife
shouts to me on the tractor
roaring in the field:

“I’ve had enough.”
And like a ballerina,
she rises on one foot, sole
of the other foot firm

against her knee
and with arms overhead
so fingertips kiss,
she smiles,

pirouettes,
and then like a helicopter
lifts into the air,
whirls over the garage

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poem by Donal Mahoney
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