Snow on Christmas Day. As I walk out with bird seed birds cry Santa’s here. Donal Mahoney
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
A corner sentinel for 40 years, Charlie’s Diner is the only landmark in a neighborhood of blue-collar people who love their burgers thick
Walking in the forest as morning comes I hear piccolos of wrens and robins offer hymns to God
There’s a football field between u… I’m in one of the end zones bellow… and you’re in the other one bawlin… the cliffs of your cheekbones streaked with mascara.
Sleet on the turnpike in the middle of the night but I keep driving, both hands on the wheel, nowhere to pull off,
It’s time to stop the killing by order of the courts. Time to stop the injections
A gray summer day the sun is on vacation sunflowers hang their heads Donal Mahoney
“Screw the Vernal Equinox” is all Cootie Kelly ever says sitting triumphant with his foaming glass of Guinness on the last stool at Maggie’s
After the TV mavens had their say the gnomes crept out of their cave… spoke and returned to their caves. Thunder struck, hell broke loose and the mavens came back on TV
This traveling salesman has worn out six vans in 40 years and he hopes to retire soon. Age and illness
Far away and long ago stuff happened in Gramps’ life that he’d like to forget but he can’t, even though he can’t always remember what he had for breakfast, lunch or dinner. But anything...
An hour before dawn the paper is out on the lawn white in the moonlight a trumpet dozing after a long night in a jazz bar
After Yeats and Heaney, you wonder when the new one will come galloping out of Dublin or perhaps from yet another farm
Jimmy and Billy, two young men in kindergarten, went home from school every day just before noon. They lived in a small town in Nebraska, in the middle of farm country. It was the 1950s...