Three Poems by Donal Mahoney

Unintelligent Design  

An hour a day, 
sometimes more,
I chipped away 
with mallet and chisel
on a block of marble 
I found in Carrara
and shipped to New York 
on the deck of a trawler.

I offered the marble 
to a famous sculptor 
who told me he works
in granite only 
so I grabbed his beret 
and one of his smocks 
and said I'd sculpt 
the block myself 
with whittling skills
picked up as a kid 
from a drunken uncle 
named Whittling Sid.

Several weeks later, 
to my surprise, 
I finished the bust 
of a chimpanzee  
simply by wielding 
mallet and chisel 
the way I wield 
pencil and eraser 
when hewing a poem.
 
Working with marble 
or working with words, 
a sculptor or poet
proves less is more 
by chipping away
until something emerges
upright and walking
with a soul of its own. 






An Old Poet Shares a Secret  

The editor of the school paper
came at the appointed hour
and found the old poet

in his backyard alert 
in a lawn chair with a 
butterfly net on his lap.

She opened her iPad, 
conducted her interview
and asked him at the end 

where poems come from.
The old poet said he didn’t know.
That’s why he has his butterfly net.

If a poem floats by he uses his net
to lift if carefully out of the air,
take it in the house and pin it

to the wall with his name under it.
When his wall’s covered with poems
he calls his publisher who comes

and takes the poems away.
In six months the old poet says 
he has another book on Amazon.






Just Like Yesterday  

Fred and Martha have always voted 
the same way since their marriage 
long ago but not this time 
and Fred wondered why Martha 
was voting the other way 
until the other night 
when they listened to the news 
and heard women as old as Martha 
say they had been molested as a child.

During the commercial Martha told Fred 
she too had been molested and she 
remembers it just like yesterday.
She had never told Fred before.
He did his best to look stoic but 
felt guilty for every man.

Martha explained what happened
that day in the back seat of the Buick
next to her father’s friend from work 
when they were all going 
to the carnival to ride
the tilt-a-whirl and her father 
didn’t see what happened
in the rear-view mirror.

Martha didn’t tell her father.
She was 12, after all,  
going to the carnival 
to ride the tilt-a-whirl
on her birthday like
her father promised.
She didn’t want to ruin 
everybody's day.

Bio: Donal Mahoney, a product of Chicago, lives in exile now in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and  Commonweal.  Some of his online work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=

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