Best Flinty Poems

Some rocks jut out jagged spears
or cut back into dark caverns
like a skeleton's yawning scream.
Others show their faces—smooth
as a woman's breast—tumbled,
contoured, and polished 
by a raging mountain stream.

Some rocks crumble into dust
or shell a slippery slide 
like dry, shifting desert sand
under the heel of my...

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Flinty and Callused

In this miner’s shack
the vase on the dresser
squats beneath
a giant cactus
planted by hands
flinty and callused.

“When Mona was here,
this vase got roses,
nothing else.
After she left  
I gave it this cactus.
It never needs water.” 


Donal Mahoney...

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