Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and Commonweal. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=
Marimba in the Afternoon
Songwriter's Nightmare
Marcia and the Locusts
Marcia was 17 the first time
Marimba in the Afternoon
Raul is a kind man
who plays marimba
in a salsa band at LA clubs
late into the night.
Some afternoons he plays
at a nursing home in Cucamonga
where he was born, grew up
and dashed home from school.
He’s paid with a taco,
maybe an enchilada,
a burrito now and then.
On Sunday a fresh tamale
almost as good as his mother
used to make after being in
the fields all day, long ago.
Old-timers in the day room
bounce in their chairs, some
on wheels, to Raul's music.
Long ago they were young
and danced all night in
tiny clubs after being paid
a few dollars a basket for
picking grapes and plums
under pounding sun.
Songwriter's Nightmare
Where did it go?
I really don't know.
I lost it weeks ago
in the middle of the night.
Too tired to get up.
Said I'd take care of it
first thing in the morning.
Didn't want to wake the wife.
Now it's lost in the ether
with some others, gone forever.
They never come back.
I feel like the blind man
in the yard next door
trying to find the red ball
his guide dog failed to fetch.
How does he know it was red?
Or the lothario memorialized
in the paper this morning
for crawling out the window
when his lover's husband
caught an early plane home.
Left his pants and wallet behind.
Some things never come back,
sometimes for the better
but not this time.
The next time I wake up
in the middle of the night
and hear the band playing
a new song in my head
I'll get up, believe me,
and write everything down.
It might be another
"Moonlight in Vermont."
Marcia and the Locusts
thousands of locusts rose
from the fields of her father's farm
~Donal Mahoney
and filled the air, sounding
like zithers unable to stop.
Her father was angry
but Marcia loved the music
the locusts made.
She was in high school then
and chose to make
locusts the focus
of her senior paper.
At the town library
she learned locusts
spend 17 years
deep in the soil,
feeding on fluids
from roots of trees
that make them
strong enough
to emerge
at the proper time
to court and reproduce.
Courtship requires
the males to gather
in a circle and sing until
the females agree
to make them fathers.
Courtship and mating
and laying of eggs
takes almost two months
and then the locusts fall
from the air and die.
Marcia remembers
the iridescent shells
on the ground shining,
She was always careful
not to step on them.
She cried when
the rain and the wind
took them away.
Now 17 years later Marcia is 34
and the locusts are back again.
Her dead father can't hear them
and Marcia no longer loves the music
the way she did in high school.
Now she stays in the house
and keeps the windows closed
and relies on the air-conditioner
to drown out the locusts.
Marcia has patience, however.
She knows what will happen.
She reads her Bible
and sucks on lemon drops,
knowing the locusts will die.
In the seventh week,
the locusts fall from the air
in raindrops, then torrents.
"It is finished," Marcia says.
She pulls on her father's boots
and goes out in the fields
and stomps on the shells
covering the ground
but she stomps carefully.
At 34 Marcia's in no hurry.
Before each stomp,
she names each shell
Billy, John, Chuck,
Terrence or Lester,
the names of men
who have courted her
during the 17 years
since high school.
They all made promises
Marcia loved to hear,
promises she can recite
like a favorite prayer.
She made each man happy
as best she could.
They would grunt
like swine the first night,
some of them for many nights.
But then like locusts
they would disappear.
~Donal Mahoney
