Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Those Poems, That Fire

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