The following is new work from poet, Donal Mahoney. Donal is the first of our contributors to the blog whose work is completely new to us. We look forward to reading more of his and any others who contribute to us.
***
Lines for a Female Psychiatrist
Perhaps when I’m better I’ll discover
you aren’t married, after all,
and I should be better by Spring.
On that day I’ll walk
down Michigan Avenue
and up again along the Lake,
my back to the wind, facing you,
my black raincoat buttoned to the neck,
my collar a castle wall
around my crew cut growing in.
Do you remember the first hour?
I sat there unshaven,
a Martian drummed from his planet,
ordered never to return.
With your legs crossed,
you smoked the longest cigarette
and blinked like a child when I said,
“I’m distracted by your knee.”
The first six months you smoked
four cigarettes a session
as I prayed out my litany of escapades,
each detail etched perfectly in place.
The day we finally changed chairs
and I became the patient
and you the doctor,
you knew that I didn’t know
where I had been,
where I was then,
and even though my hair
had begun to grow in
how far I’d have to go
before I could begin.
***
***
Love Is Another Thing
Sitting at the table
spinning the creamer
running her fingers through sugar
the kids spilled at supper, Sue
suddenly says, “Don,
love is another thing.”
Since love is another thing
I have to go rent a room,
leave behind eight years,
five kids, the echoes of me
raging at noon on the phone,
raging at night, the mist
of whose fallout ate her skin,
ate her bones, left her a kitten
crying high in an oak
let me free, let me free
***
***
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.
Minus 9 Online 