Best Donal Poems

We have something in common, a fellow I talk to now and then. We’re about the same age and perhaps the only ones in the diner who think our past lives are interesting. So when the two of us shoot the bunk over coffee, it’s...

Continue reading...

A group of older men gather
once a week to talk about life 
after a heart attack.

Old Len chews tobacco still 
and tells jokes in a voice so low 
no one can hear the punch line. 

Another man asks Len  
to talk louder so they...

Continue reading...

Third day on her honeymoon
Sharon asks Butch what it's like 
for a man before he gets married.

A bricklayer by trade, 
and a man of few words,
Butch doesn’t know what to say 

but he knows Sharon has always 
liked to go bowling; in fact, 
that’s how...

Continue reading...

In the woods soft snow
falls on the first day of spring.
Two daffodils laugh.



Donal Mahoney...

Continue reading...

Black lives matter
in different ways 
to different people
in the American rainbow
especially bus companies
that bounce over potholes
in the big cities of America.
For them money matters.

If blacks stop riding buses
the buses will be empty  
except for other poor folk
white, red, yellow, brown
who don’t drive cars 
but...

Continue reading...

Otis was once a monk 
who took no vows, was
free to leave the abbey 
and eventually he did.  
I met him over chicken wings 
at Sadie's Soul Food Grill.

For almost 20 years
every spring and summer
Otis labored in the fields
raising vegetables 
and crops of every...

Continue reading...

She’s been making quilts
for half a century and he’s been 
making poems that long as well
and every now and then he brings 
a chocolate shake to her place
so they can take a break and talk.

He always finds her at the frame, 
peering through thick lenses....

Continue reading...

Caseworker Determining Eligibility 

		Cabrini-Green Projects
		Chicago

The child, age two, hammocked in the half
moon of his mother’s arms, is locked
in palsy, yet moves an eyelid as I ask, 
moves the other as his mother answers,
application form interrogation.
The father was a white policeman.
“Curiosity,” the mother says. “No more.
I...

Continue reading...

Reunions can happen 
and leave you speechless.
I’m standing at a bank 

of elevators in a hospital
going to visit my wife 
when a wheelchair rolls up

carrying my internist 
from years ago.
An excellent doctor

who retired to teach,
according to rumors.
Now he’s pushed by a woman

I assume is his...

Continue reading...

With his arm held closely by his side,
President Putin took a ride,
On his steed, so big and strong
Who thought this man could do no wrong,
It is regrettable to say
Only a horse could feel this way.
Putin is a manipulator,
A narcissist and a dictator.
Putin was on the...

Continue reading...

In Defence of Donal Trump

He is a crude person, not one I would
like the share a coke with, but he has galvanised
the working class (middle class) which was
shunned under the previous administration.
The class forgotten by other parties have found
a voice someone who talks for them...

Continue reading...

Dad hit me only once, an upper cut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height, 5’8,” a fireplug who if provoked could whirl like a...

Continue reading...

Natural Family Planning
has its ups and downs
so to speak but it often  

works quite well.
But when the calendar
says not tonight

I ask my wife to please
go in another room
with that banana.


Donal Mahoney...

Continue reading...

It may have been the devil himself who prompted the kids in my schoolyard back in 1947 to chant "Patsy Foley's roly-poly from eating too much ravioli."

At first, no one could remember who started the chant. Patsy, a sweet and ample child, was in the...

Continue reading...

Blooming for one day
a lily welcomes the sun.
Bumblebees drop in.


Donal Mahoney...

Continue reading...