Illustration by Jeffrey Littleton.

All rights reserved.

 

 

Four by Donal Mahoney

 

 

Bag Lady

Chicago’s North Side...

 

This senior citizen

whose face is Rushmore still

squats with pigeons on the steps

of the Rogers Park Masonic Temple.

She wears a shawl this snowy day

and is beneath the visor of a hunting cap

a woman who has paused along the way.

Her shopping bags, stuffed, frayed,

and each square feature of her face, confess

she speaks at best a little English.

Rested, she will rise,

a penguin on a floe,

and navigate her day.

 

 

 

Before I Sally Off

Lost in Chicago...

 

State and Madison.

Saturday, high noon.

Everyone and me.

Surrounded, I give up.

Against the curb,

the sea foams up

and in the distance

white birds soar,

black apostrophes

cleaver split

but still tangential,

rising, falling.

The light goes green.

Before I sally off

I look down and there

against the curb,

great white waters bowl

and people drown.

 

 

 

Caseworker's Tune

Housing Project, Chicago

 

Where I am now

there are no leas, no

sheep feeding.

There are tenements,

children breeding.

Where I am now

there are no trees, no

wrens lighting.

There are halls far, dark,

an old man peeing.

 

 

 

Midnight Anthem for a Chicago Alley

 

The lack of visitors is uterine

and that is why you porcupine

in this dark corner. Here

who can see the cobra

slither from your lips, spray

the phrases of your mind,

slip back to its moist nest.

Here, who can hear the jeer

of cheetah eyes. “Come,”

they cry, “pour on the light.

Your heart I’ll lacerate

with razor fright.”

 

 

 

Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing Corp.) and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His poetry has or will soon appear in DM, The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Orbis (England), Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Revival (Ireland), The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Davidson Miscellany, Gloom Cupboard (U.K.), The Common Ground Review, Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.