by Donal Mahoney

Sometimes you sit for days
sucking yourself in 
praying the right words
will fall in your ear
toboggan over the whorls
pierce the canal
and settle in your brain, 
an embryonic delight.
Sometimes you sit for days
and finally the words come
and they’re always a surprise
like the first tulip in April
or a sudden
orgasm for your wife.

Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. A Pushcart nominee, he has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Poetry Friends, The Citron Review, Pirene’s Fountain (Australia) and other publications.