Blood and Spittle


These drawings
he fingers on paper now
in blood and spittle
are the curls
of a little girl
he stole from Van Gogh
whose sister
he fathers now
on paper
without any words.


Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, Snakeskin (U.K.), Revival (Ireland), The Christian Science Monitor, The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Thick With Conviction, Poetry Super Highway, Public Republic (Bulgaria) and other publications.