America in 4013

By Donal Mahoney

Is that lava or simply mud
dripping from the cheeks
of this old woman asking me
why this library has no books.
I ask her where she’s been
for the last 2000 years.
Under a rock? In some cave?
After all, the year is 4013

and now the only book extant
is the Bible and the only copy
of the Bible is in Rome where
a few monks older than she is
sit in catacombs all day
copying pages of it

onto yellow foolscap, hoping
to create another Bible
no one will read, as was the case,
I’m told, when dusty Bibles
were in almost every home
and computers were a luxury.

But then I soften up because
I can see this woman was born
without a cell phone in her ear.
I tell her if she wants to read
something wonderful online,
as soon as a computer comes free

I’ll call her even though she has
no cell phone in her ear.
First, however, she must show
a number, not a name,
tattooed above her navel,
the only form of identification
accepted in America in 4013.

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Mingle

By Donal Mahoney

Tomorrow morning when I wake
it’ll be the nurse who’s crazy.
I’ll heave my body up
on its elbows and yell
in her ear, “It’s time for your pill.
Get dressed. Breakfast is ready

in the Day Room. Juice, rolls, bacon, eggs.
You’ll find a tray with your name on it,
faces you know, a chance for conversation.
Eat each meal at a different table.
Mingle. Before you can get out of here,
you have to love all the faces you hate.”

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Man at the Bus Stop on Halloween

By Donal Mahoney

The others, of course,
are more rabid than he
but less apt to show it.
Whenever he strikes,
he never romps off.
He stands with the wrist
that he’s snatched
from the lady
tight in his teeth
as he waits with a smile
for the wagon.
He’s one of the few
wrist-snatchers still
on the streets of Chicago,
and he makes his rounds
in old tennies.
His technique is simple:
He dives for the purse hand,
gives it a whack, and severs
the wrist without slobber,
then stands like a Vatican Guard
with the wrist in his teeth
until he is certain
he has no pursuers.
At night in his dreams he sees
the women whose wrists
he has held in his teeth.
They stand at the bus stop
like Statues of Liberty,
shrieking and waving
their stumps like flares.
He prays their screams
will bring to a frieze
the patrol cars glowing
in the middle of the street.

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Birds of Paradise

By Donal Mahoney

As you move toward the door
to open it so I may leave
I notice how your Levis cage

the anacondas of your thighs.
One more move like that, I say,
and I’ll toss my briefcase to the floor

and bring you yipping to the couch
and kiss your breasts until they rise
like startled Birds of Paradise.

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Husband and Wife on Hassocks Eating Sausage

By Donal Mahoney

He tries again to situate his grosbeak
nose beneath his spectacles.
He twists the silver toothpick in his teeth
and hunches now a little more toward her,
saying “Listen, dear, I’ve said all this before,
and now I’ll say it all again.
Perhaps this time you’ll listen:

“You’re slovenly and gross. Your jowls
swing beneath your jaws like testicles.
Your mammoth breasts need tweezing.
Your freckled calves are carved of lard.
These things are true, my dear.
They’re not some crazed
vision of conjecture.”

The lady belches as she reaches for
a pickle spear, a slice of cervelat,
and begins to comb her yellow hair.
She hunches now a little more toward him,
saying “Listen, dear, I’ve heard all this before.
What’s happened here is eminently clear.
You no longer love me.”

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Lemon Underwear

By Donal Mahoney

The New Morse Hotel
Chicago, circa 1970

What if after Browne has gone
one of us discovers who Browne was,
leads the rally to his room before
the maid has time to broom the webs,
retrieve from underneath the bed
the sweat-stiff socks, the lemon underwear?

What if before he leaves Browne scrawls
across the dresser’s dust: “I have leased
new quarters and have gone to them.
Don’t give the clothes you find here to the poor.
Don’t burn the books. Beware the next
who rents this room, who leaves it only after dark,

who screams if the maid knocks once
to ask if she may clean. When he arrives
have four men bear him, belly down, downstairs.
Tell them: ‘Pitch him out across the lawn!
Let him land in a lake of sun.
Let him drown there.”

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Death A Bear

By Donal Mahoney

Odd the way the very old
pick a winter day to fall,
break a minor bone,
be assigned to bed
and death a bear
napping out the winter
rises in his lair,
instantly aware
here is Spring
and ultimately honey.

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Bungalow Couple Redux

By Donal Mahoney

They weren’t talking at all, back then.
Deep in that house, conceiving their dwarfs,
they weren’t talking at all, back then.

And they’re not talking at all, right now.
Still in that house, rearing their dwarfs,
they’re not talking at all, right now.

And they won’t be talking again.
When the dwarfs break out they’ll stay in that house,
not moving, not talking again.

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Sitting Shiva in a Hotel Lobby

By Donal Mahoney

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.

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Jimmy the Blind Man Says He’s in Love

By Donal Mahoney

Remember, a blind man
can see things a sighted man can’t.
So I’ll tell you about her and then
you can tell me whether I’m right.

The first time a man meets her,
his eyes flicker and dart.
Desire, an appropriate reaction.
The first time a woman meets her,
her eyes pop out and coil on her forehead.
Envy, another appropriate reaction.

Today, who can blame either?
Today, who believes the canard
about the true, the good, the beautiful,
in theory or in a woman?
I never believed it

till the day that I met her.
And you won’t believe it either
unless you do what I did–frisk her for flaws
that will allow you to live as you are,
as you were, as I was when I met her.
As for me, I’m no longer the same.
Perhaps you can help me.

The day that I met her, I was sitting
on pillows propped against the wall not far from Walmart.
I had my cane and my cup properly positioned.
I was ready for business.
And then I heard heels type on the pavement
the story of my life. I could hear in those heels
a woman who knew me although we had never met.

I had my baseball cap upside down on the sidewalk
between my outstretched legs.
It was full of my wares–pencils, spearmint gum
and Tootsie Pops, free, for the children.

When her heels stopped in front of my spot,
I sensed this lady had bent over my cap
and was checking my wares. Her hair
was a waterfall licking at my knees.
I was inebriated by her scent.
She selected two pencils and didn’t ask price
so I knew that I had a real customer.
And then with a wave of her hand she let
paper money float through the air
into my cup. Believe me, a blind man
can see with his mind the butterfly
of paper money float to his cup.
Any denomination, large or small,
is a Monarch afloat on a zephyr.

Customers, you see, usually drop change.
A blind man can tell you what coins
a customer has dropped by the clink in his cup.
So when I heard her Monarch take to the air,
I forgot about my teeth and smiled up at her.
I usually don’t smile on weekdays.
I used to smile on weekends till Mother

got hit by that Hummer. She was never the same.
On Saturdays she used to bring meals in tinfoil
labeled in braille to tuck in my freezer.
She wanted me to know which meals were where
but I was never able to read her braille
so I ate whatever the microwave served.

This new lady in heels, however,
has stolen my bereavement and taken me captive.
She has me smiling. I’ve been stoned on her musk
since the day that I met her and I’m getting more wobbly.
Everywhere I go her scent surrounds me.
I’m an addict now and I need my cane and my dog
just to get around the apartment.

So, please tell everyone now in the parade passing by
to listen to her as I did and in time they may hear,
as I can hear now, a year later, the cherubim sing
as she blooms with our child like a sunflower in summer
while I wonder, I try.

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