—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO
—Anonymous Photos
SOMEONE FROM HOME
When I was a child we always went to church but only once a year as a family.
My father would rise every Sunday and attend the 6:30 Mass, then come home and read his Sunday paper, every word of it, section by section, saving the obituaries for last.
My mother would stuff my sister and me into our Sunday best and send us off to the Children’s Mass at 10. It was a short walk to the church and times were different back then. We were children but safe in our little neighborhood of brick bungalows where neighbors kept an eye out for strangers or anyone or anything that looked odd. The south side of Chicago in the Forties and Fifties was blue collar, little villages teeming with immigrants and very peaceful, except for the occasional fight that might break out in a neighborhood bar.
After sending my sister and me off to church, my mother would put the roast in the oven, ask my father to keep an eye on it, and she would go to the 11:15.
This was our family pattern, even on Christmas and Easter. I recall not one variation.
But there was that one day a year when the four of us as a family went off to church together. And that was on Good Friday when we walked to the church, my sister and I in front, my father and mother right behind us, to attend the Stations of the Cross at 3 p.m. Not a word was said as we walked those few blocks. But I was impressed by this family event because if it was important enough to get us to go to church together, I figured Good Friday must be a pretty important day.
The only other time we went anywhere as a family was an Irish wake. Chicago back then was not only home to the Stockyards filled with cattle, swine and sheep. It was also home to large groups of immigrants. And my father would always want the family to dress up and go to an Irish wake, hoping, as he so often said, to meet “someone from home.”
When I was a child we always went to church but only once a year as a family.
My father would rise every Sunday and attend the 6:30 Mass, then come home and read his Sunday paper, every word of it, section by section, saving the obituaries for last.
My mother would stuff my sister and me into our Sunday best and send us off to the Children’s Mass at 10. It was a short walk to the church and times were different back then. We were children but safe in our little neighborhood of brick bungalows where neighbors kept an eye out for strangers or anyone or anything that looked odd. The south side of Chicago in the Forties and Fifties was blue collar, little villages teeming with immigrants and very peaceful, except for the occasional fight that might break out in a neighborhood bar.
After sending my sister and me off to church, my mother would put the roast in the oven, ask my father to keep an eye on it, and she would go to the 11:15.
This was our family pattern, even on Christmas and Easter. I recall not one variation.
But there was that one day a year when the four of us as a family went off to church together. And that was on Good Friday when we walked to the church, my sister and I in front, my father and mother right behind us, to attend the Stations of the Cross at 3 p.m. Not a word was said as we walked those few blocks. But I was impressed by this family event because if it was important enough to get us to go to church together, I figured Good Friday must be a pretty important day.
The only other time we went anywhere as a family was an Irish wake. Chicago back then was not only home to the Stockyards filled with cattle, swine and sheep. It was also home to large groups of immigrants. And my father would always want the family to dress up and go to an Irish wake, hoping, as he so often said, to meet “someone from home.”
AN IRISH CHRISTENING
Thomas said
you can’t go home again
but I did for my sister
and the christening of her first.
Everyone, on folding chairs, against
the whitewashed basement walls, was there
for ham and beef and beer, the better
bourbons, music, argument and talk.
Maura came; she hadn’t married.
Paddy, fist around a beer, declared
I owed my family the sight
of me more often.
Hannah, thickset now,
gray and apronless,
rose beside the furnace,
wolverined me to the coal bin door
and asked me in the face,
with sibilance and spittle,
who or what it was
that kept me anywhere,
everywhere, but there.
STROKE
Ireland to America, long ago
In this Kerryman’s eyes
big ships sail
and lighthouses flicker
light years away.
He’s 70 today and sits
tombstone-straight
in his caneback chair,
waves at a flake
hanging from his nose,
misses and curses.
It’s his first curse of the day
and he’s ready for anything,
an ancient ram braced for the British
climbing through the mist.
His children, parents themselves now,
sit in his parlor, silent around him.
When they hear his first curse,
they know it’s 20 years earlier
and Father is calling
a meeting of the family.
They shift in their chairs
as his eyes and his words
whiz around the room
like bees liquored up
looking for something to sink into.
Dingle Town
DINGLE, IRELAND
The bathroom carpet,
wall to wall, is blue,
the lightest blue,
to complement
the bowl and ceiling.
Apropos the moment:
I bend the waist
and heave the gristle
from last evening's steak.
Tomorrow I shall row again
to see those ancient men
in caps and coveralls
stand like statues
while they talk
and tap gold embers
from clay pipes
forever glowing.
I'll go there
at the dinner hour
and see them once again
fork potatoes,
whole and steaming,
from big kettles filled
at dawn by crones
forever kerchiefed
and forever bent.
At dawn you hear
these women
sing their hymns
like seraphim
a cappella
as they genuflect and dip
big black kettles
in the sometimes still
sometimes foaming sea.
Dingle Peninsula
LEPRECAUN’S CREED
The thing of it is,
says Johnny O,
none of us knows
whether he is
while others announce
after looking around
they beg to differ.
The thing of it is,
says Johnny O,
some would say
he’s here, he’s there,
he’s everywhere
while others would say
after looking around
no one can see him
anywhere--so how
can he be everywhere?
The thing of it is,
says Johnny O,
he’s right over where?
Let’s look around.
Leprechaun
For more about leprechauns, see
CONSUELA AND SEAN
Through the nursery glass
Carlos Montero peeks at Consuela,
his twelfth, in the arms of a nurse.
Pink as a peony
with brilliant black hair,
Consuela is raw, bawling.
The nurse takes Consuela
away to be washed as Carlos
digs deep in his denims,
locks elbows, gleams,
turns to me. I feel odd
in a suit and a tie as I
wait to see Sean, our first.
When the nurse brings Sean to the window,
Carlos Montero whips off his sombrero,
makes a bullfighter's pass and beams.
"Señor!" he booms like a tuba. "Ole!"
Suddenly I'm as happy as he.
THE WIDOW MURPHY SETS HER CAP
Mrs. Ryan keeps her cat inside at night
but lets it out at dawn to go anywhere it likes
while she's at work. Every day the cat
crosses the road to call on the Widow Murphy.
Mrs. Ryan doesn't know her cat calls on Mrs. Murphy
but she has told the widow twice her cat is on a diet:
a little kibble in the morning and a little water at night.
Nothing else. When the cat arrives at Mrs. Murphy's,
the widow lets him in and gives him warm milk
and a dollop of salmon on a porcelain saucer.
Afterward the cat takes a long nap on a Persian rug till
the widow lets him out in the afternoon
to cross the road and wait for Mrs. Ryan
to pull her Lincoln into the driveway.
Mrs. Ryan's husband, Paddy, now retired,
has never called on the Widow Murphy.
He doesn't know the widow's waiting.
Paddy likes his tea strong, his wife once said.
Tipperary Town
THE ONLY PLACE TO GO IN TIPPERARY
Father Kelly has always claimed
the only place to go in Tipperary
once you're dead is Eagan's Mortuary.
Father Kelly says Eagan lays a client out
as if a body were a mackerel from the sea
glistening in the bottom of a boat
once the mad thrashing is over.
Father Kelly has always claimed
a dead mackerel deserves a nap
before the flames of hell take over.
The late Tommy Dugan arrived at Eagan's
a day or so after he'd been shot
and Eagan laid him out perfectly
with both eyes open and a plastic
booger peeking from his nose,
a cosmetic touch Tommy had requested
when he came to Eagan's the week before,
chomping on an unlit panatela.
Tommy came that day to make
final arrangements, as they say.
That same day Tommy asked if he could be
waked in Eagan's finest casket upside down,
his pants pulled down around his knees
and a sign across his arse saying "Kiss this!"
as a final salute to his mother-in-law.
But the law in Tipperary specifies
no sign of any kind in any casket so
Tommy settled for the plastic booger in his nose.
He knew his mother-in-law would curse it
at the family viewing prior to the wake.
At Eagan's you can make arrangements
years before you die and Eagan guarantees
he'll lay you out the way you specify
provided everything's within the law, of course.
But Tommy Dugan's widow swears
Eagan must have been possessed to put
a plastic booger in a dead man's nose.
Rosie Dugan can't believe her sober Tommy
would ever ask for anything like that.
But after Mass on Sunday friends remind her
Father Kelly has always claimed
the only place to go in Tipperary
once you're dead is Eagan's Mortuary.
Father Kelly says Eagan lays a client out
as if a body were a mackerel from the sea
glistening in the bottom of a boat
once the mad thrashing is over.
Father Kelly has always claimed
a dead mackerel deserves a nap
before the flames of hell take over.
__________________
PADDY MURPHY’S WAKE
The priest had been here earlier and the rosary was said
and relatives and friends in single file were offering condolences.
"Sorry for your troubles," one by one they said,
bending over Maggie Murphy, silent in her rocker,
a foot or so from Paddy, resplendent in his casket,
the two of them much closer now than they had ever been.
A silent guest of honor, Paddy now had nothing more to say,
waked in aspic, if you will, in front of his gothic fireplace.
But the hour was getting late and still the widow hadn't wept.
Her eyes were swept Saharas and the mourners wanted tears.
They had fields to plow come morning and they needed sleep
but the custom in County Kerry was
no one leaves a wake until the widow weeps.
Fair Maggie could have married any man in Kerry,
according to her mother, who almost every day reminded her of that.
"Maggie," she would say, "you should have married Mickey.
His limp was not that bad," but Maggie wouldn't listen.
Instead, she married Paddy, "that pestilence out walking"
as her mother often called him
even on a Sunday but only after Mass.
Maggie married Paddy the day he scored the only goal
the year that Kerry took the trophy back from Galway.
That goal was no small thing, Paddy would remind us all forever
until one of us would gag and buy him another drink.
That goal, he'd shout, was something historians would one day note,
even if they hadn't yet, and every time he'd mention it,
which was almost daily, Maggie's mother would remind her daughter
that she should have married Mickey and had a better life.
The final time her mother praised poor Mickey,
a screaming match ensued, so loud it woke the rooster
the day before her mother, feverish in bed,
gurgled like a frog and died.
This evening, though, as the wake wore on,
the mourners grew more weary
waiting for the tears the widow hadn't shed.
Restless in his folding chair, Mickey put his bottle down
and rose to give the eulogy it had taken days to memorize.
"Folks," he said, "if all of us would holler down to Paddy now,
he'd holler back, I'm sure, and tell us,
despite the flames and all that smoke, that Kerry
winning over Galway is all that ever mattered, even now.
We'll always have cold Paddy over there to thank for that."
The Widow Murphy hadn't moved all evening,
but after hearing Mickey speak, she began to rock with fury
as she raised a purple fist, shook it to the heavens
and then began to hum her favorite dirge.
The mourners all joined in and hummed along until
midnight pealed on the mantel clock and then,
as if released by God Himself, the mourners one by one
rose from folding chairs and left in single file, freed
by a hurricane of the Widow Murphy's tears.
__________________
NIGHT LIGHT
The last visitor before I sleep
is always the old priest
puffing up the stairs to my door,
a wine cask under each arm,
a loaf of pumpernickel in his teeth.
He’s always too late to give the last rites,
and even though I’m usually dead by then,
it falls to me to console him.
So I say, “Father, Father,
you don’t have to hurry.
Faith is no longer a klieg.
It’s a night light left burning all day,
and its bulb is hissing.”
(first pub. in Commonweal Magazine, 2009)
The priest had been here earlier and the rosary was said
and relatives and friends in single file were offering condolences.
"Sorry for your troubles," one by one they said,
bending over Maggie Murphy, silent in her rocker,
a foot or so from Paddy, resplendent in his casket,
the two of them much closer now than they had ever been.
A silent guest of honor, Paddy now had nothing more to say,
waked in aspic, if you will, in front of his gothic fireplace.
But the hour was getting late and still the widow hadn't wept.
Her eyes were swept Saharas and the mourners wanted tears.
They had fields to plow come morning and they needed sleep
but the custom in County Kerry was
no one leaves a wake until the widow weeps.
Fair Maggie could have married any man in Kerry,
according to her mother, who almost every day reminded her of that.
"Maggie," she would say, "you should have married Mickey.
His limp was not that bad," but Maggie wouldn't listen.
Instead, she married Paddy, "that pestilence out walking"
as her mother often called him
even on a Sunday but only after Mass.
Maggie married Paddy the day he scored the only goal
the year that Kerry took the trophy back from Galway.
That goal was no small thing, Paddy would remind us all forever
until one of us would gag and buy him another drink.
That goal, he'd shout, was something historians would one day note,
even if they hadn't yet, and every time he'd mention it,
which was almost daily, Maggie's mother would remind her daughter
that she should have married Mickey and had a better life.
The final time her mother praised poor Mickey,
a screaming match ensued, so loud it woke the rooster
the day before her mother, feverish in bed,
gurgled like a frog and died.
This evening, though, as the wake wore on,
the mourners grew more weary
waiting for the tears the widow hadn't shed.
Restless in his folding chair, Mickey put his bottle down
and rose to give the eulogy it had taken days to memorize.
"Folks," he said, "if all of us would holler down to Paddy now,
he'd holler back, I'm sure, and tell us,
despite the flames and all that smoke, that Kerry
winning over Galway is all that ever mattered, even now.
We'll always have cold Paddy over there to thank for that."
The Widow Murphy hadn't moved all evening,
but after hearing Mickey speak, she began to rock with fury
as she raised a purple fist, shook it to the heavens
and then began to hum her favorite dirge.
The mourners all joined in and hummed along until
midnight pealed on the mantel clock and then,
as if released by God Himself, the mourners one by one
rose from folding chairs and left in single file, freed
by a hurricane of the Widow Murphy's tears.
__________________
NIGHT LIGHT
The last visitor before I sleep
is always the old priest
puffing up the stairs to my door,
a wine cask under each arm,
a loaf of pumpernickel in his teeth.
He’s always too late to give the last rites,
and even though I’m usually dead by then,
it falls to me to console him.
So I say, “Father, Father,
you don’t have to hurry.
Faith is no longer a klieg.
It’s a night light left burning all day,
and its bulb is hissing.”
(first pub. in Commonweal Magazine, 2009)
ONE OF THE HA-HA’s FROM OLD STABALL HILL
Ballyheigue, County Kerry, Ireland
That man over there
with his head in the well,
his thumbs in his ears
and his arse in the air
like a zeppelin at moor,
if he can write poems
the Ha-Ha’s will read,
all of the Ha-Ha’s,
no matter the breed,
even the Ha-Ha’s
from Old Staball Hill,
if he can write poems,
then poems he will.
_________________
Today’s LittleNip:
SONG FOR BALLYHEIGUE
County Kerry, Ireland
Twig fire limn
eight fairy
in a lour cave mouth
Four of whom
a tabor thrum
Four of whom
breathe zephyr
through wee fife
All of whom
leap star,
the joy of life
All of whom
sing lark,
the yet to come
___________________
—Medusa, with many thanks for sending us poems for our extended St. Patrick’s Day!
