One Poem from Donal Mahoney

A Father’s Reverie


I have been sentenced to tumblers
of iced tea in an old lawn chair
for the summers that remain
in my life. But I don’t complain.
I go to bed and I lie there

for hours like a mummy.
I stare at the ceiling and finger a curl
in my sleeping wife’s hair.
How many hours do I slaughter

each evening, asking no one
why I quit drinking
the day I got married,
why I got married
the day I quit drinking.


Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he has had poems published in 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), Calliope Nerve, Rivets, Decompression, Black-Listed Magazine, Pirene's Fountain (Australia) and other publications.

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