Kaleidoscope and Harpsichord

As I've told my wife too many times,
the meaning of any poem hides
in the marriage of cadence and sound.

Vowels on a carousel,
consonants on a calliope,
whistles and bells,
we need them all
tickling our ears.
Otherwise, the lines
are gristle and fat, no meat.

Is it any wonder, then,
my wife has a problem
with any poem I give her to read
for a second opinion, especially
when the poem has no message
and I'm simply trying to hear
what I'm saying and don't care
if I understand it.

The other night in bed
I gave her another poem to read
and afterward she said this poem
was no different than the others.
She had hoped I'd improve.

"After all," she said,
"you've been writing for years
but reading a poem like this is
like looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord."

Point well taken,
point well said.

But then I asked her
what should a man do
if he has careened for years
through the caves of his mind
spelunking for the right
line for a poem

only to hear his wife say
after reading one of his poems
that it was like
"looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord."
What should he do--quit?

"Not a chance,"
she said this morning,
enthroned at the kitchen table,
as regal as ever in her fluttery gown
and buttering her English muffin
with long, languorous strokes
Van Gogh would envy.

"He should write even more,
all day and all night, if need be.
After all," she said, "my line
about the kaleidoscope and harpsichord
still needs a poem of its own.
It's all meat, no gristle, no fat."

by Donal Mahoney

Black Seed by Black Seed

by Donal Mahoney

Every day the same people
at the same table
at the rear of the cafeteria.
The maiden, 35 at least,

is gray at the temples,
sour at the mouth.
The widow, 55, waves
a cigarette like a wand.

Girdled and dyed,
she needs no one now;
She ministers to a dog
and has a new apartment.

The accountant, 65, wants to retire,
his years of intemperance
tempered by a stroke,
his anger at everything

suddenly gone. The janitor, 60,
explains over and over
how over the weekend
he snipped from his garden

husks of dead sunflowers
and drove them out of the city
and into the forest
and there in a clearing

spread the black cakes
for chipmunks to strip,
black seed by black seed.
I, a young editor,

“with your whole life
in front of you,” they insist,
sit through it all,
Monday through Friday,

spooning broth, buttering slices
of rye, and praying that after
pudding again for dessert,
the phone on my desk

will explode too late
with a call I’ll take anyway,
and that after that call, I’ll rise
and take from my sport coat

a speech I wrote years ago,
a speech I’ll discard for two lines
off the cuff: “Here’s two weeks’ notice.
I have found a new job.”

Wilson and Broadway at 4 a.m.

Chicago

Sunday evening. Drunk
and strolling home.

On the way an hour now,
block after block,

bar to bar.
Weekend’s gone,

Monday’s turning.
Along the way

his swollen fingers find
parking meter posts

are an endless xylophone.
Plunked, they play

the anthem
of a life misspent.

by Donal Mahoney

Bless Me, Father

Two minutes more, Father Paul,
and you will hear another of my strange confessions.
Right now, I'm outside
watching the rain on my glasses
running in rills.
When I make it to the church,
I'll confess the usual stuff with a few variations,
the same plot, the same ploys,
the same frenetic tale I have always to tell.

Next week, however, things will be different.
Next week, I won't make a list
in the diner across from St. Peter's.
The waitress there knows me too well.
Last week she asked, "Am I on your list?"
"Not a chance," I said.
"What time do you get off from work?"
"5 o'clock," she said.
"I'll be back," I said,
"and we can go to St. Peter's and make
the Stations of the Cross."

Father Paul,
you can see that I'm trying
to bring women to the Lord.
So next week, no list.
I'll sit in the diner and swig
on a milkshake instead.
When I come into your box,
I'll fall on the kneeler
and whisper through the grille,
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
I did the same stuff this week
that I did last week
but this week I did it more often."

Father Paul, if I quit making lists,
this whole process
will be easier on both of us.
Who wants to hear a grown man
recite forever what Yogi Berra called
deja vu all over again?

by Donal Mahoney

The Deli On Granville

by Donal Mahoney

I lived in the attic back then,

and late those evenings I had to study

and couldn’t afford to go drinking

I’d run down to the deli and buy

bagels and smoked lox.

I’d watch the lame son

wrap each item in white paper

while his father, coughing at the register,

pointed to the cans on the wall

and screamed, “Serve yourself! Serve yourself!”

I’d grab a tin of baked beans and he’d smile.

Now, years later, I return to the deli

and find that it’s closed.

The sign on the door confirms

what everyone else already knows:

There has been a death in the family.

Lines for a Female Psychiatrist

Perhaps when I’m better I’ll discover
you aren’t married, after all,
and I should be better by Spring.

On that day I’ll walk
down Michigan Avenue
and up again along the Lake,
my back to the wind, facing you,
my black raincoat buttoned to the neck,
my collar a castle wall
around my crew cut growing in.

Do you remember the first hour?
I sat there unshaven,
a Martian drummed from his planet,
ordered never to return.

With your legs crossed,
you smoked the longest cigarette
and blinked like a child when I said,
“I’m distracted by your knee.”

The first six months you smoked
four cigarettes a session
as I prayed out my litany of escapades,
each detail etched perfectly in place.

The day we finally changed chairs
and I became the patient
and you the doctor,
you knew that I didn’t know
where I had been,
where I was then,
and even though my hair
had begun to grow in
how far I'd have to go
before I could begin.

by Donal Mahoney

Love Is Another Thing

Sitting at the table
spinning the creamer
running her fingers through sugar
the kids spilled at supper, Sue

suddenly says, “Don,
love is another thing.”
Since love is another thing
I have to go rent a room,

leave behind eight years,
five kids, the echoes of me
raging at noon on the phone,
raging at night, the mist

of whose fallout ate her skin,
ate her bones, left her a kitten
crying high in an oak
let me free, let me free

by Donal Mahoney

Sitting Shiva in a Hotel Lobby

For a year this image has haunted me.
Over and over I hear on the gramophone
Cohen put in my ear
“Feature this:
On a crowded elevator
a strange woman in a baseball cap
unbuttons your fly.”
That image is on the ceiling every night
as I sit shiva in the lobby
of this small hotel,
a hookah, like a tired cobra,
coiled at my feet,
a shamrock in my buttonhole
dead from the last parade.
Night after night,
I think about this strange woman
as each hour I watch
the doors of the elevator
part and give birth.
I observe each new guest carefully,
hoping the woman in the baseball cap
will tire of the rain and ride up
in the elevator and register.
I want her to sit in the lobby
and talk with us.
We who are guests here forever
have eons to hear
what she has to say.
We have paid our rent in advance.
We can afford to sit here and see.

by Donal Mahoney

In Break Formation

The indications used to come
like movie fighter planes in break
formation, one by one, the perfect
plummet, down and out. This time they’re

slower. But after supper, when I hear
her in the kitchen hum again, hum
higher, higher, till my ears are

numb, I remember how it was
the last time: how she hummed
to Aramaic peaks, flung
supper plates across the kitchen
till I brought her by the shoulders

humming to the chair.
I remember how the final days
her eyelids, operating on their own,
rose and fell, how she strolled
among the children, winding tractors,
hugging dolls, how finally

I phoned and had them come again,
how I walked behind them
as they took her by the shoulders,
house dress in the breeze, slowly

down the walk and to the curbing,
watched them bend her in the back
seat of the squad again,

how I watched them pull away
and heard again the parliament
of neighbors talking.

by Donal Mahoney

The Peahen

A dream wrought by curry

Somewhere in Mumbai
great fans whir against the ceiling

as the old madam reigns
from her rocker and has

the girls come out, one by one,
picks this girl for her own

won’t let me pick mine
from those she has parading.

by Donal Mahoney

Honeymoon in the Garden Apartment

Lacking in the expertise of those
accustomed to the practice
my wife and I completed
for the first time
what we later would perfect.

Afterward, my wife arose,
excused herself, and padded
through three rooms.

Through three rooms,
as I lay back,
I could hear the porcelain
singing to her urine.

by Donal Mahoney

Country Cafeteria

in Shelby County,
Illinois, 1989

The two weeks
I spent in that small town
on assignment, I saw no blacks
except for two older women
regal in every way,
hair coifed in silver gray,
working in the Country Cafeteria.
They walked like pastors’ wives
as they bused their 20 tables.
White badges on their uniforms
announced in red their names,
their years of service.
They never said a word,
not even to each other.
They just took the cups and plates away
and wiped oil tablecloths pristine.
I took three meals a day in silence there,
the only place in town to eat.
I was the stranger in a suit and tie,
a city weed among stout farmers in old coveralls
who came to town each day to note
“no rain yet” and “the corn is dyin’.”
Before each meal instead of saying Grace,
I wanted to stand and ask these ladies
as they bowed before the clutter on their tables:
If you have worked here all these years,
and lived in this town also,
where in the Name of God,
other than at home or church,
are you free to talk or laugh or sing
or clap your hands in emancipation?

by Donal Mahoney