Donal Mahoney: Three Poems

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Birds of Paradise

 

 

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.

 

Two Appliqués

 

If the greatest of these

is charity

then tell me again

why it’s gauche

if this young man

in a booth at a bar

dives under the skirt

of the farmer’s widow

smiling across from him.

 

There he will find

what he’s after

and get that big kiss

before driving her home

through jackhammer rain

and flying with her

through the windshield

making a turn.

 

Now they're a legend,

the talk of the town,

emblazoned forever

for pickups to see

as two appliqués

on a viaduct wall,

their Rorschachs

bright red,

whatever their ages.

Women Who Walk Like Men

 

They seem to be everywhere now,

women who walk like men.

With hair cropped in a paint brush,

bullets for eyes and knives for noses,

they walk long halls, hips so still

they can have no pelvis.

Then one day you meet one

and become her friend.

A week later you still wonder:

Are all the women who walk like men

wildflowers, really,

locked in a hothouse, craving the sun?

 

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), The Beatnik (U.K.), Revival (Ireland), Catapult to Mars (Scotland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Calliope Nerve, Asphodel Madness, Pirene's Fountain (Australia) and other publications.