A Death in the Family

Sometimes it helps to learn
a relative has died
a close relative you haven’t

seen in years and didn’t plan
to see again because
you haven’t talked in years

and wouldn’t talk again unless
you met in heaven or perhaps in hell
and God or Satan said  

it’s too late now to harbor hate
why not shake hands--
and that may happen yet

if the two of you should soar
beyond the clouds or
plummet to the coals

and find yourselves together
in the same place forever.
The two of you always knew

where the other one would go
and too late now you both
may be surprised.

-- Donal Mahoney

Annual Physical

You go to the doctor
at 21, no problems.
Maybe a flu shot.
That’s it.

You go to him
at 40, and you
need a pill or two
and he says
watch your weight.

You go to him
at 60, and you’re
now a fixer-upper.
You need more pills,
he says, and
watch your weight.

You go to him
at 70, and he finds
plumbing problems
and asks questions
to verify that all
your lights are on.
Doesn’t mention
your weight.

You go to him
at 80, and he says
you’re doing well,
all things considered,
but it wouldn’t hurt
to put your affairs
in order.

You tell him  
you can’t remember
any affairs but he
can ask your wife.
She’s still raising hell
about someone
named Mildred,
if that was her name.

-- Donal Mahoney

White girl with dreads

And I love the way she rocks them
As Bob Marley plays in the coffeehouse
In a small college town
Just as a Charlie Parker cd
Is fading away in my headphones
She’s wearing the colors of Jamaica
Around her neck and it
Suits her
To grow dreads is to be
Married to your hair; it’s a commitment
Some take as long as 10 years
To grow dreads
Which come down to her
Ass
Like Samson, her hair gives her
Power
I should ask her if she has
Some black in her
Or more bluntly
Does she want some black
In her ?
Cos now,  her body reminds me
Of a yogi’s
And I’m imagining it
Bending into shapes
More complicated than algebra
And she’s either sending a text
On her smartphone
Or receiving one
I’m thinking maybe she’s jewish
Or Italian
She looks soulful and ethnic
I look at her again and she
Looks so epic
I look at her a third time
With the same voraciousness
Dagwood has when he sees a
Six foot long sandwich
 
I’m not a reggae head; I’m more
Into jazz
But I don’t care, cos her body
Is a jazz song all its own
I’m imagining her dreads
Under a sunsplash of a
Shower
Washing all the drama
Away

-- Erren Geraud Kelly

Sugar Maple Leaf

…after the photograph by Alexis Doshas
 
 
Dreaming of northern lights
As I'm walking the streets with you
The stars burn white like your thighs
From my touch
 
We,re the only children of
Twilight , tonight
Though our breaths replicate
Multitudes
 
A leaf burns white in the
Night, like your thighs
 
A dream we share becomes
Real as I hold you
The night is a film negative
Truths revealed  ,as I
Hold your hand
 
On a a maple leaf night
That burns white
As your thighs
 
I watch as the will
Of your dreams
Control you
 
You climb up a hill
No scheme lies before
You
 
Such are the choices we make
Fragile, as a leaf falling
Are the breaths we take
 
On a maple leaf night
The sky burns white
Like your thighs

-- Erren Geraud Kelly

To the woman in the white fiat

Your walk is a samba
I listen to some mornings  as
I’m making breakfast
Tall and tan and lovely, you
Move as graceful as a
Sonnet
Maybe you’re not American
Maybe you’re French, Italian or
Greek
Beauty easily pulls its
Veil over my eyes
Like a samba, your hips
Swing with the rhythm of
The sea
You are a dream in white
Cotton pants
Moments like you come and
Go like the tide
But your face is the sun that
Never sets
 

-- Erren Geraud Kelly 

On Patrol

The patrol  officer rides by
As I’m standing in the soup  line
Like I’m headed to purgatory
I  treat  homelessness like a short   sentence
Just do it and get it over with
Sometimes, she patrols without a bike,
Even  without her black shades,  her
 steel  blue eyes  carry authority
I look at her as she  rides  by
 again  and I smile at her,  not to mock her
 authority, but just to imagine If she was
 just a woman
Maybe just riding around in the
Park, showing off her legs
I imagine her wearing her hair down,
 Maybe in a sundress and sandals,long legs
 shiny with suntan oil,  breasts braless  yet tasteful
she rides by me again,  as I wait in line to go to dinner
she looks at me through her dark shades
She’ll never admit it, but she
 Smiled

-- Erren Geraud Kelly

Wildflowers

She’s checking out coffee thermoses
At starbucks
As I’m listening to jam bands
She inspects each one and is
Picky
She grabs one thermos, the tallest
Of the bunch
She is tall and all legs
She looks like one of those
Earth mother, hippie girls
The jam I’m listening to
Could be singing about
Her
She wants a container
That would
Fit in the container of the
Dashboard of her car
As she’s checking out the thermoses
I notice how white her neck is
Porcelain, whiter than bone
Whiter than the sheets
I imagine both of us
Laying on
I tell her the dress she’s wearing
Becomes her
A dark blue, with various types
Of flowers all over it
I keep imagining what this woman
Would look like
On sheets white as her
Or a sheet covered in flowers
As the jam band keeps playing
In my headphones
We’re basking in the morning light
Her body becoming one with
The flowers

-- Erren Geraud Kelly

Coffeehouse Poem # 57

An asian woman
Sits across from me
As an old school r and b
Song plays
They could’ve easily sang
About her
She walks around like
A living doll
As winter bares it
Face
but she sits undeterred
her lips are rose petals
as a doo-wop song now
serenades her
she is a ninja of
love

-- Erren Geraud Kelly

Disliking Males, Favoring Females

“Danger, watch for the preying rattlesnakes
biting on impulse, sending paralysis through their fangs,
and never allowing any visitors near their holes,”
says the sign by the forest’s road.

“Rejoice, for the loving peacocks
allowing eyes to view their colored feathers,
never sending them cruel impulsive acts,
and never living on deceit,”
says the frightened bird watcher.

-- David Hernandez 

Address Me as Serious as an Adult

From my stepladder,
I climbed up so high
to my wooden house,
a box held by four branches.

Despite the ants, the termites,
and the wind shaking my house,
I never want to come down.

I see my parent’s house
and wondered, “If my tree will stay,
I won’t be forced to live in a moving van.”

“How do I address those cousins inside?
Do they see me as a shadow
or someone to say hello and goodbye to?”

Out from the door,
I slipped and fell,
hurting my back,
now I won’t climb back up.

-- David Hernandez

Fly on the Windshield

While driving my Camry,
a fly suddenly lands on my windshield,
quickly getting blown away.
I imagined how it would look dead,
and then alive.

Thrown in front of the bus,
his body squished; his blood a splash.
His organs flew with his legs
across the street; his wings severed,
no longer worthy for flight.

He slides down the windshield,
trying to break free,
but couldn’t escape the wipers.

This would be a quick death for the writer,
if he wasn’t a coward,
afraid to address himself
to the world.

-- David Hernandez

Teddy Will Be Home for the Holidays

This year Teddy phoned me
from who knows where
instead of one of our siblings.
This year I’m the honoree
but it’s only a matter of time
before he gets angry again.
He’s stifling his anger
because of the holidays.
He wants a place to eat
and a share in the family glee.

But Sissy is right about Teddy
being nice when he reaches out
after going away for months.
He likes to fly in for a holiday,
enjoy a bountiful repast,
fall back in his chair and
issue the old accusations
recited whenever he visits.

He’s the youngest of seven
and swears every time he comes
that Mom and Pop treated us better,
that he got the hand-me-downs.
I’m afraid if he’s not on his meds,
there’ll be an encore this year.

Right after coffee and dessert
and several snorts of brandy,
Teddy will become a blowtorch
and burn for at least an hour
scorching us with memories.
The siblings will go up in flames
along with Mom and Pop
gasping in their graves.

If it happens again this year,
I’ll take the floor after him
and point out that Gertrude Stein
said a rose is a rose is a rose
but failed to point out that  
a twit is a twit is a twit.
And if reincarnation awaits us,
as Teddy says it does,
he’ll return as salmonella.

-- Donal Mahoney

Movement of Pink Flowers

We are swimming, bodies
arched. Each an active V.
The body does not hesitate.
Seeking only richness of flesh,
saturation. Yet tightness
in limb, vigor to react.

It is mild July.
Birds recite litanies
in wood. Trees
greener every rainfall,
their leaves growing longer.
Pink flowers strewn
over sidewalks.

The body is swimming.
We constantly drift through
dates, locations, through faces.
A mindfloat as we swim along
side one another greeting
new waves when they occur.

It is mild July night now
covering swiftly swiftly.
Air perfumed crepe myrtle.
We are suspended this moment
between light and dark.
Clouds rushing over heavens.
Sun drops from sky.
Pink flowers are blowing
across boulevards.

-- Joan McNerney

Present

You gave me
five brown pods
to grow in
my garden bed.
I put them
in a glass jar
with my locket.
Five brown pods
winding through
heaven. Weaving
night with winter
wishes for wisteria.
In a flower dress
wandering over
perfumed fields
I sleepwalk
searching for
my golden locket
and your embrace.
 

-- Joan McNerney

Fingers: Sheep

Like sheep to the fold, fingers
Having been there so many times before
Find their own way, whether  
Or not the shepherd’s attention lingers

Hay rake, lathe or keyboard, they
Manifest completion of daily tasks
As easily as sheep find the grass, while
The shepherd’s eye, heedless, strays

Floating far aloft in dreams, gazing
Distant at possibilities lost among the rocks
As if he would rescue them, though
They are only safely grazing

Abandoning the land of dreams, feeling
Keenly the loss of the sweet imagined
Only to find his flock wildly straying
Among the rocks and with wolves playing

-- Tom Rubenoff

Midnight Squatters

Homeless man
in a Trayvon hoodie
under an old raincoat,
a gift today from

the Salvation Army,
sits like a capital L
against the wall
of a downtown bank

while a homeless cat
strolls around him,
hoping for bits of ham
from the gnawed remains

of yesterday's sandwich
as happens many nights
when the cat visits him  
despite no bell or kettle.

-- Donal Mahoney

Death Watch

We know the score, the statistics, recent crime rates, and
The odds for and against; we know what’s there waiting,
 
The lone gunman and street gangs, drug dealers and users;
We know about the mall shootings, classrooms in chaos,
 
The stray bullet, the family gatherings going terribly wrong;
We know a lot about cause and consequence, about revenge
 
And about regret; we know about confusion and catastrophes;
We empathize and sympathize, we witness and participate;
 
We sign petitions and build shrines, we stockpile, get ready
For the inevitable, buy guns, stronger locks, and alarms.
 
We casually discuss morality as if it were a distant planet,
Discuss measures and means; we sanely discuss our insanity;
 
Killing and dying have become a way of life. A preoccupation,
A conversation starter, a news item, a frightening part of us all.

-- J. K. Durick

Being Young

It’s like I never fit the part, nor knew the lines or expected moves.
Miscast like that, I’d show up late, dressed all wrong, saying whatever
Came to me, embarrassing things I’d remember for years and redo
In my head, over and over, re-imagining scenes with me as something
Heroic, a comfortable character for once, the proper protagonist for
A story I could tell myself without being embarrassed.
 
It’s like I watched the whole thing from the sidelines, wearing the wrong
Team’s uniform. I remember falling down a lot – tricycles and bicycles,
Running and even walking – off the back porch on a trike, down the cellar
Stairs on a shoelace. I’ve looked up from there, bleeding, embarrassed,
And promising myself I’d know better, eventually, but eventually seems
So long back then, back when just waiting to be picked lasted forever.

-- J. K. Durick

Playing God

Want to know how
God may feel at times
about us mortals?

Then every dawn
in any weather
place a tin

of Fancy Feast
on the deck
for the feral cat

behind the oak
who won’t come out
till you go back inside.

Then take a peek
and watch old Tom
come up the steps

and eat his fill
before rumbling off
to find a harlot or a saint

to accept his genes
before he comes back
to feed again at dawn.

You may be a deity to Tom
but you will never get
one meow of worship.

-- Donal Mahoney

All Aboard

Next to me on the train
going home to the suburbs
is another guy stuck in a suit
reading his paper,
a normal-looking guy
who suddenly says
it’s terrible, what’s happening
in Syria and Iraq,
terrorists killing people.

Then he says if he believed
what the terrorists believe
he wouldn’t care either
whether he died in battle.
If 77 virgins were waiting for him,
he’d be happy to die
a martyr for the cause,
but since he’s an atheist
he knows no one is waiting.  

Then he looks at me
and asks if I'm a believer.
I’m a lot bigger than he is
so I say I’m a Catholic,
and he says if he believed
what Catholics believe—
that Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, is in a wafer
waiting in that little house
in the middle of the altar--
he wouldn’t walk into church,
he would crawl up the aisle
every Sunday and lie there,
face down, praying.
He asks if I get his drift,
shaking his paper.

I say I certainly do, but
Catholics know what they have
and don’t like making a scene.
It’s in their genes from the time
they spent in the catacombs
praying not to be killed.

He says he understands
the importance of propriety
but says if Christ is God
and is on that altar, how can
Catholics just sit there,
mannequins in a pew,
standing and kneeling
once in awhile to avoid
clots in their legs.
I agree that’s a good question.

Finally he yells,
loud enough for all to hear:
For Christ’s sake,
the next time you go to church,
act like he’s there
and do something!
He shakes his paper again.

The train rolls on
and there’s a loud moment of silence.
The man has a point, I say to myself.
Finally I say I’ve enjoyed talking
and have learned a lot
but the next stop is mine.
I have to get off.

-- Donal Mahoney