PEOPLE WHO LIVE ABOVE STORES

                Morse Avenue,

                Chicago


It's two in the morning
and people who live above stores
have sprung from their beds
this hot summer night.
They're leaning out of their windows
and bellowing into the street

at the baker who launched the alarm
in the Rogers Park Donut Shoppe.
It's been ringing for hours
and the police haven't come.
Not even the firemen.
The donuts will never get done

and it appears now that
people who live above stores
will remain in a rage
leaning out of their windows
waving cigarettes like strobes
and bellowing the rest of the night.





Bio:

Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas Corp. (now the Boeing Corp.) and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Revival (Ireland), The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Davidson Miscellany, The Common Ground Review, Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.