Donal Mahoney

Wound in Cellophane

The older women come to coffee
with cookies wound in cellophane.
They talk of children

or their children’s children
or their garden.
Or they simply sew

and watch the young girls trickle in,
buy berry rolls and coffee,
nibble, sip, lick fingers, blow

small parachutes of smoke,
and laugh a young girl’s
world of willy-nilly.


Widower

In the miner’s shack
the vase on the dresser
squats beneath
a giant cactus
planted by hands
flinty and callused.

“When Mona was here,
this vase got roses,
and lots of water.
After she left
I gave it this cactus.
It never needs water.”

{Poetry by Donal Mahoney}