The Last Honeydew
On the way home from work
I buy the last honeydew
in the window at Meyers.
Tonight the wife
will cut it in half
and with elbow bent
scoop the pulp
like ice cream
from its golden shell.
She will savor its juices
as I do the cherries
on the sundaes of her breasts.
The Morning After
When she sees him in the morning he’s
all foamed up and in the mirror shaving
so she stands behind him, saying,
“Bill, your father was a ladies’ man--
that's why you have this way with women.
Deirdre, you kissed once, light on the lips.
Bridget, ah, the melon of her hips
you kept inviolate, whole, entire.
But since your father was a ladies’ man,
you will be a priest instead.
You'll never fill a woman,
never watch her swell,
and she will be the better for it,
won’t she, Bill.”
Public Housing
The rattle
in the walls
would stop,
I’m told,
if the litter
in the halls
were edible.
Night after night,
tin after tin
the rats squeeze in
to feast on
their reflections.
Bio: Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Poetry Super Highway, The Panulaan Review, Opium Poetry 2.0, Asphodel Madness and other publications.
