Donal Mahoney, the son of irish immigrants, grew up in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago—almost an Irish ghetto, if you will—in the Forties and Fifties. His father had been expelled from Ireland circa 1920 for running guns as a teenager for the Irish Republican Army. His mother left Ireland around the same time, tired of living with 9 siblings in a thatched roof cottage in the middle of an English landlord’s farm, harvesting cabbages and rutabaga. His parents brought to America hope for a better future and the neuroses of their past, both of which affect the author even to this day. He is thankful, though, that his parents emigrated. He prefers loving Ireland, still a very strange if lovely place, from the shores of the United States.
Signs in Windows
In 1920 he came on a boat
from Ireland and found
his way through Ellis Island.
He found a room
in a boarding house
catering to his kind and
went looking for a job
but found instead signs
in windows saying
“No Irish Need Apply.”
A cemetery asked him to
dig graves and lower the dead.
In America today
there are no signs like that.
Black and brown
apply and whites
sometimes hire them.
My father was white.
But in 1920 his brogue
was a long rope that
almost lynched him.
Donal Mahoney
An Irish Enclave, 1956
South Side of Chicago,
long before Barack Obama
On bungalow porches
and out in backyards,
on hot summer evenings
old men lower themselves
into green canvas chairs,
smoke and sip beer,
laugh and relive
Easter, 1916
and plot what they’ll do
when the n?#@ers pour in
and eddy all over
the dregs of their city.
 |
Donal Mahoney |
Donal Mahoney
This Mick on the Next Stool
in a pub in Ireland
So this Mick on the next stool,
who's as serious as Yeats
but looks like Wilde,
stares at me,
with eyes crossed,
sipping Guinness through the foam.
Finally he burps and says,
"I'll bet that growth is cystic.
If it were on my nose,
I'd light this match,
hold a straight pin over it,
then prick it.
Poof! There'd be
a belch of goat cheese, sure.
But what of it?
You'd need a Q-Tip,
maybe a drop of p'roxide.
But in two weeks
new skin would bloom
smoother than a baby's bum.
With your luck, Yank,
it would freckle."
Donal Mahoney
Meeting Dad Again
Thirty years later, Dad came back
and we met for Ham and Yams at Toffenetti’s.
Pouring his tea, he told me he had
to restore power once
at a newspaper warehouse
and the storm broke again
and the lightning cracked his ladder.
He spent the whole day, he said,
sitting in that dark warehouse,
waiting for the lightning to stop
and for the truck to bring a new ladder.
He had a great time, he said,
sitting next to a flickering lantern
and reading for hours the Sunday comics
printed and stacked
six months in advance.
Donal Mahoney
Stumps in His Cabbage
You would think you would
love a man who died
for you and for everyone else,
even those who will never
know that he did.
But you don't, not really.
The monks in the choir
you hear on Sunday
sing hymns from the heart.
They make fruitcake all week
stoked by the knowledge
he died for them.
They love him
in a way that you
can only imagine
despite much prayer.
You adore him, however,
as well you should.
You know he's infinite,
omnipotent, without
beginning or end.
You hold him in awe.
No one commands your
respect more than him.
You follow his will, mostly.
You tell others about him
but the love doesn't come,
gripped as you are
in tongs that have held you
since childhood
growing up in a house
where a man who worked
long hours, never drank,
put you through school
then went nuclear at dinner
with your mother
when he discovered
"stumps in my cabbage,
lumps in my potatoes,"
a man whose roar rattled
the neighbors and sent
the dog under the bed.
You would think you would
love a man who died
for you and for everyone else.
But you don't, not really.
You keep trying to love him
and your father as well.
Donal Mahoney