artwork: ralph murre
Those
Poems, That Fire
by
Donal Mahoney
I
stood in the alley, still
in
pajamas, somebody’s shoes,
another
man’s coat, my eyes
on
the bronc of the hoses.
Squawed
in the blankets of neighbors,
my
wife and three children sipped
chocolate,
stood orange and still.
Of
the hundred or more I had stored
in
a drawer, I could remember,
comma
for comma, no more than four,
none
of them final,
all
of them fetal.
~
first published in Four Quarters Magazine
