Bending, Grabbing, Sorting
Chinese Laundry
Chicago, 1970
In a storefront laundry
on North Clark Street
brown draperies release
this quiet man
who has my shirts.
He smiles and bows–
how carefully
he wraps them.
Before the draperies
fall back, I see,
for a moment,
in a circle swirling
almost out of sight
three kerchiefed women,
glistening black,
bending, grabbing, sorting.
First Son Growing
In the long run the boy will be worth
all the misery I’ve caused you,
all the grief.
If only for his smile,
yours, I know.
If only for his eyes,
mine, I know.
But his eyes,
they have your smile,
brighter than a rainbow,
streaming through them.
Chino and Chambray
Forty years older than I,
Charles, in his tweed cap, stands starched
in gray chino and blue chambray.
For more than a year his broad tie
has let the same iridescent duck
fly against a vermillion sky.
Like a Vatican Guard
he oversees the parking lot
I cut through each morning,
far corner to far corner,
as I cleave two triangles of cars
parked in my wake.
I ask him one morning,
“Charles, do you mind
when I cut through your lot?”
“Not at all, sir,” says Charles
as he stares straight ahead
and starts the windmill
of his good arm to guide
the pearl Hummer
now pulling in.
Donal Mahoney has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Revival (Ireland), The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Mid-America Poetry Review, U.S. Catholic, The Davidson Miscellany, The Goddard Journal, The Pembroke Magazine, The Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine, Sou’wester, Salt Lick, The Mustang Review, Obscurity and a Penny, The Common Ground Review, The Centrifugal Eye, The Honey Land Review, Lark, The Avocet Review, Poetry Super Highway, Miller’s Pond, The Road Apple Review and other publications.
