Donal Mahoney

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In Memphis On Business

 

 

this belle like a feather

floats table to table

bearing menus and water,

 

stunning this Yankee

in Memphis on business

whose host swears the South

 

has many more like her.

Up North, the Yank says,

young ladies like her bump tables,

 

slop coffee in saucers.

No wonder this Yankee

in Memphis on business

 

smiles when again

this belle like a feather

floats table to table

 

bearing menus and water

as if she were certain

the earth isn’t there

 

and the sky and the air

are highway enough for a belle

bearing menus and water.

 

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.