Love Is Another Thing
Sitting at the table
spinning the creamer
running her fingers through sugar
the kids spilled at supper, Sue
suddenly says, “Don,
love is another thing.”
Since love is another thing
I have to go rent a room,
leave behind eight years,
five kids, the echoes of me
raging at noon on the phone,
raging at night, the mist
of whose fallout ate her skin,
ate her bones, left her a kitten
crying high in an oak
let me free, let me free
Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. One of many Pushcart Prize nominees, he has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Public Republic (Bulgaria), Whisper, Calliope Nerve and other publications.
work to a calm 