Armadillo Home
by Donal Mahoney
Donal Mahoney

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, Orbis (England), 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, Gloom Cupboard (U.K.), The Common Ground Review, Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.

Rush Hour, Chicago

Early evening traffic
rather heavy.
Autos armadillo home

along the Outer Drive
as people out of mouths
of buildings enter mouths

of anything that moves
wherever every evening
they are going. Tonight

they interrupt the passion
of another person's day,
the crone beside hydrant

who once again this evening
bows and swoops and curses
as she burlaps broken glass

making faces at the people
propped in autos staring
as she lets the traffic pass.

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