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.


Donal Mahoney

donalmahoney@charter.net
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had poems published Ancient Heart Magazine and other publications in the United State, Europe, Asia and Africa,

With Love from Euphor

On the tiled floor, I saw strange forms appearing.
The head of Spartacus
or that, more exciting, more modern also, of Actarus.

Princes
whether they come from Thrace or Euphor
always haunted my frozen mornings,
my capsized nights.

Later
- much later -
it is by their laughter that I was started the most.

The princes always had an open throat
and amazed eyes
in bed.

I saw their wings growing
at the same rate as their sexes
who were spread out around me
everywhere
in me
on me
in my eyes and the clouds.

I flew away too
far from this nest
to join
in dream
in the bathroom
unreal colorings,
small encrusted gravels,
in the shape of happy princes,
in the shape of dark princes.

First published in Poetry Super Highway September 2008

Walter Ruhlmann was born in 1974 in France. He currently lives in Mamoudzou, Mayotte where he works as an English teacher. He has been publishing mgversion2>datura (ex-Mauvaise graine) for fifteen years. Walter is the author of several poetry chapbooks in French and has published poems in various printed and electronic publications world wide. He co-edited and translated poems for the bilingual free verse and form section for the anniversary issue of Magnapoets in January 2011.