The Shine Journal

 

 

 

 

Caseworker Determining Eligibility

 

by

 

Donal Mahoney

 

 

 

 

 

Cabrini-Green Projects

Chicago, 1963

 

 

The child, age two, hammocked in the half

moon of his mother’s arms, is locked

in palsy, yet moves an eyelid as I ask,

moves the other as his mother answers,

application form interrogation.

The father was a white policeman.

“Curiosity,” the mother says. “No more.

I didn’t go with him for money.”

 

 

 

 

Previously published by New City Magazine

 

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BIO: I have worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times,  Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas Corporation (now  Boeing), and Washington University in St. Louis. Other places where his work has been published are: The Wisconsin  Review, Revival (Ireland), The Kansas Quarterly, Commonweal, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine,  and others.

 

I've returned to writing in retirement and have sent out some new  stuff and have been lucky enough to have about 60 poems accepted in a variety of print and online publications.  

 

MOTIVATION: I don't know that I have ever had a  specific motivation for writing a poem. Phrases and clauses  arrive at odd times and I used to write them on scrap paper. If  they sounded good days later, I fooled with the words to see  where they would lead me. Sometimes a poem would result. Often I  would have no idea where the poem "came from." I would just be  happy when I could honestly say that the poem is finished even  though I agree with the famous writer who said a poem is never  finished, simply abandoned.

 

Photo by: Helen Humphrey