Harry Tompkins and the Art of Forgiveness

Harry Tompkins hadn't been to church for many years. He still believed in God but going to church didn't interest him. Then on a warm Saturday afternoon in August, he met Jayne, a lovely woman, at a company picnic. He liked Jayne a great deal and he thought he might improve his chances with her if he accepted her invitation to go to church on Sunday morning. Jayne had a way about her that Harry liked. Besides she looked like a woman who would bear good children.

"What time should I pick you up?" he asked her. She told him 9:30 would be fine. "That will give us plenty of time to get to the ten o'clock Mass." 

The priest's sermon, it turned out, was about the importance of forgiveness and that was a topic Harry knew something about. He had not made a lot of enemies in life but the ones he had made, he cherished even if their infractions had occurred decades ago. Forgiving them would never enter his mind. Enemies are enemies, Harry thought, but he could understand where the priest was coming from. 

Harry had spent many years of a considerable education in Catholic schools. And one of the basic mottoes in those schools was to forgive your enemies as you would want Jesus to forgive you. He didn't want to be disrespectful to the Son of God but Jesus had grown up in Nazareth, after all, which was quite a bit different than Harry's neighborhood in Chicago back in the 1950s. In Harry's youth, fights were not a daily occurrence but a week seldom went by without at least one good fight occurring. Fights were always fair back then because to fight dirty was the lowest thing someone could do. You would be branded for life as a dirty fighter. If you couldn't get the job done with your fists, then don't fight is the way Harry looked at it.  

Chief among Harry's enemies from the old neighborhood were Elmer and John. They were two boys, older than Harry by a couple of years. Decades ago they beat the Hades out of him in an alley in Chicago. Harry at that time was in the 8th grade and he was going home from school when he got jumped. The nun had been happy with Harry that day, even if that was a rare occurrence, because he had won the all-school 8th grade spelling bee, no small feat in a class where verbal skills outdistanced math skills. Besides, it was usually a girl who won the spelling bees. But Harry could always spell. He'd look at a word once and it was memorized. This time he won because he could spell "ukulele" and Barbara O'Brien, "Miss Goody Two Shoes," couldn't even come close and had to settle for second.

His enemies Elmer and John were high school sophomores the day they pounded Harry, who though big for his age was still only an 8th grader. Elmer and John were small for sophomores but the two of them together were more than Harry at the time could handle. It was a beating Harry never forgot, perhaps because he had won all the other fights he had ever had in grammar school and would have later on in high school. Besides, it sure wasn't easy explaining to his parents that night how he had managed to get a black eye and split lip coming home from school. 

"I pay the nuns at St. Nick's good tuition," his father had said, "to make sure you grow up right." He wanted to go down to the school and discuss the matter with the nuns but Harry somehow talked him out of it. He explained that the kids who beat him up didn't go to St. Nick's. In fact, Harry said, they looked like Lutherans. His father said to tell him if Harry ever saw the boys again. 

Two years later, when Harry was a sophomore in high school, Elmer and John were seniors at a different high school. Harry was now 6'1" and about 180 lbs. He'd been lifting weights on a regular basis, hoping to gain weight for the football team. Elmer and John, on the other hand, were still relative runts, perhaps 5'6" or 5'7" and maybe 140 lbs at best. Harry hadn't seen either one of the boys since his throttling. But he had always remembered the beating and he assured himself that if he ever had a chance to make things right, he would do so.

It so happened that around that time Harry met a nice girl at a school dance and it turned out that meeting her led to renewing old acquaintances with Elmer. The girl's name was Margaret Mary and she lived in a wealthy neighborhood. She invited him to a graduation party that her parents had arranged. She didn't know that Harry was only a sophomore. 

Harry decided to go to the party because he liked the girl despite her living in a fancy neighborhood, one that he had visited only once before when his high school basketball team had defeated the team from Margaret Mary's school. Besides, Harry remembered that Margaret Mary had said her parents had hired a caterer to provide the food. That sure beat hot dogs, the main fare at any party in his neighborhood. 

There were a lot of kids at the party that Saturday night and they were all from different neighborhoods. At first, Harry saw no one he knew, certainly no one from his blue-collar neighborhood, which was just as well because with him in a suit and tie he would have had to take a lot of razzing if any of his friends spotted him. Later in the evening, however, Elmer walked in, still short and skinny but decked out in a nice seersucker suit. 

Harry recognized Elmer immediately but Elmer did not recognize him. When Elmer decided to go outside to have a cigarette, Harry followed him. He let Elmer take a few drags before he walked up and asked Elmer how life was treating him now that graduation was near. 

"You going to college, Elmer?"

Elmer still didn't recognize Harry. It was no wonder, then, that he never saw the uppercut coming. Down went Elmer with Harry on top of him. Many punches later, one of Elmer's teeth lay on the sidewalk and he was gushing blood from his left eye. The other kids heard the ruckus and came poring out of the party but Harry, by that time, had taken off. Elmer had gotten his, Harry figured. There was no need to hang around and complicate matters.

Besides, Harry figured the cops would be scouring the neighborhood looking for a kid that fit his description so he spent the five bucks his mother had given him to take a cab home. He had never told Margaret Mary his real name, just that his nickname was "Skip." She wouldn't have been able to tell the cops where to find him. And he didn't think Elmer would remember who he was. 

And so that was one reason why in church that Sunday with the lovely Jayne--at least thirty years after pummeling Elmer--Harry found the priest's sermon on forgiveness resonating. At age 46, he had acquired a couple of college degrees, had held a good job for many years, but had never met a woman he wanted to marry. It wasn't that he hadn't met some lovely women over the years. He had met a number of them and enjoyed them all but found them disposable. 

"Most women are like Kleenex," he'd once told a friend who had inquired why he had never married. But Jayne seemed different. He thought right way she'd make a good wife. 

So Harry listened to the sermon and even prayed a little. He remembered all the words to the Lord's Prayer. Having been raised Catholic, he knew when to kneel, stand and sit which can be confusing to someone not Catholic attending a Mass. He also thought his prayerfulness might impress Jayne, who was obviously a very spiritual person. But he didn't join her in going up the aisle for Holy Communion because he had been living in mortal sin for years and as a Catholic he knew he should not receive Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. He might be a sinner, Harry thought, but he wasn't about to commit a sacrilege to impress Jayne. A few rules even Harry wouldn't break.

After Mass, Harry and Jayne went to a nice restaurant for brunch. She took the opportunity to ask him how he liked the Mass and the sermon--or as she called it, "the homily." 

Harry said he liked the Mass in that it brought back memories of his younger years in Catholic schools but the sermon, he said, had upset him a little. 

"Why," Jayne asked. 

Harry then told her in great detail the whole story about Elmer and John beating him up when he was in grammar school. He also told her how he had managed two years later to pay Elmer back with a good thrashing at an otherwise nice party.

That's when Jayne asked him if thumping Elmer wasn't enough. Couldn't he now forgive Elmer and John for beating him up? 

Harry said that maybe, just maybe, he could forgive Elmer at some point in his life but not now, even though it was 30 years later. Besides he still hadn't found John. He had even thought about hiring a private detective to get his address. Harry didn't care what city John lived in because that's why they have planes and trains. And as he told Jayne over their last cup of coffee, when he did find John he would beat the hell out of him, worse than he had beaten Elmer at that party. 

"I'll bounce his filthy skull off the concrete," Harry told Jayne, wiping the corners of his mouth with his napkin, "if the opportunity presents itself. And I'm pretty sure that some day it will. What goes around comes around. Even Hitler found that out." 

He wouldn't kill John, Harry assured Jayne, when she finally came back from the lady's room. "But if possible I'll leave the schmuck laying there in a puddle of blood, wishing he were dead."

Schmuck was a Yiddish word, of course, and he wasn't sure if Jayne knew what it meant. It would be just as well if she didn't. Harry seldom used the word but if he started to get riled up about something, it sometimes fell out of his mouth. 

If he got the chance to meet John again and settle matters, Harry told Jayne, then afterward it might be time to talk about forgiving him and Elmer but he'd have to give it some thought. He didn't like to make commitments if he wasn't sure he could keep them. Then Harry drove Jayne home and told her he'd like to see her again. Jayne smiled but didn't really say anything except good-bye when she got out of the car. 

As time went on, Harry never saw Jayne again even though he continued to call her for several months. She was never at home, it seemed, or maybe she was a hard sleeper. 

Finally Harry quit calling her and started going out again with different women. 

"The flavor of the month," as he told another friend. 

He never found another woman like Jayne but as Harry liked to say, "any port in a storm.”\

Donal Mahoney

Margaret Mary Kelly, 82, Wants to Marry Paddy Regan, 84

Father Brennan had been pastor of St. Ignatius Church for 20 years, a long time for any one priest to remain at one parish. Usually the archbishop would transfer a pastor after he had served seven years. By that time, parishioners might have needed a fresh face and fresher homilies and the pastor, truth be told, might like to see a few new faces himself in the pews every Sunday morning.

That wasn't the case with Father Brennan, however. St. Ignatius was a parish in decline in terms of parishioners and he loved those who were still there, the ones who hadn't moved or passed away. There were only about 60 people left now, most of them widows and widowers as well as one nice elderly maiden who had never married, Margaret Mary Kelly, who studied early in life to become a nun but ultimately decided that life as a nun was not for her. She moved back home to care for her aging parents and did a fine job. Her father died at 84 and her mother at 81. 

Margaret Mary herself now was 82. That's why Father Brennan was surprised to hear--word travels like a rabbit in a small parish--that Margaret Mary was thinking of marrying a widower older than she was, a man named Paddy Regan, 84, who lived in another parish a few miles away. She had never in her life shown any interest in marriage. Nor did she ever have to fight any men off. She was a fine woman not known for her comeliness as much as for her wit and her holiness. 

Father Brennan didn't know what to think.

"Well," he said to himself over a cup of tea, "if Margaret Mary wants to get married, we'll do our best for her. I just hope the groom-to-be is in fine health. The two of them may not realize that in the Catholic Church a couple must be able to engage in sexual intercourse or the marriage would be null and void. I know they have all these medications now to give a man a boost but at 84 a man might need a rocket to get the job done."

Sure enough, two weeks later, Margaret Mary rang the rectory door bell and asked to see Father Brennan. He was about to eat lunch but asked her to come right into his small library where they could sit and talk.

"I'm planning on marrying Paddy Regan, Father, a widower one parish over," Margaret Mary began, "and I thought I should come see you to make the arrangements. At our age, Paddy and I would like to get married as soon as we can. Even though we have no serious health problems, God might call either one of us any day now. So we'd like to take our vows and, as they say, start living happily ever after, however long that might be."

Father Brennan didn't know how to begin to approach the potential problem of the couple's physical readiness to engage in the conjugal act, the Church's official term for sexual intercourse within a marriage. Even if Margaret Mary had brought Paddy Regan with her, it wouldn't have been any easier to approach the subject of Mr. Regan's potency or lack thereof. Father Brennan figured Margaret Mary might be marrying for companionship as might Mr. Regan. Every once in awhile, however, another Hugh Hefner pops up but that had happened only once before at St. Ignatius parish and the man, a legend in the neighborhood, died on his honeymoon, blissful, Father Brennan hoped, at age 87. 

"Well, Margaret Mary," Father Brennan said, "you say you and Paddy are both in good health. Does he get out and about or sit around all day watching TV?"

Margaret Mary didn't know what to say except that Paddy Regan had struck her as being in fine shape, no matter the fact that he was into his eighties. After all, he had been a widower for three years so he must know what he wanted to do. Besides, he had been married twice before and both wives had died of natural causes. The first one had given him six children and the second one had given him another five. All of the children, well into adulthood now, were married, had good jobs and were a joy to Paddy. Besides, he didn't drink or smoke and could dance much younger women to the point of being too tired to continue. Light on his feet, Paddy was. 

Father Brennan's reluctance in getting down to business had a lot to do with knowing Margaret Mary had once studied to be a nun and had spent the rest of her life taking care of her aging parents. She was a very spiritual woman. When possible, she used to bring her parents to daily Mass until they got too sick to come. After both had died, she herself attended daily Mass at 6:30 a.m. and had been doing that for at least 15 years. He doubted Margaret Mary knew much about sex, never mind the Church's requirement that any man seeking to marry had to be capable of having sexual intercourse. There would be no pass for Paddy Regan if he couldn't deliver the goods, as Father Brennan liked to think of it. God bless Paddy if he's up to it, Father thought, and then chastised himself for the unintended pun.

"Well, Margaret Mary, I know that you and Paddy won't be having a family but tell me are you sure he's looking for a wife and not a housekeeper?"

This comment did not sit too well with Margaret Mary, who rustled in her seat.

"Father, I told Paddy Regan there would be no messing around till I had a ring on my finger and we had said our vows. I told him I was a virgin and I would remain a virgin if we didn't get married. The man has had two wives, Father, and 11 children. I don't think he's looking for a housekeeper. He has a daughter who comes over twice a week to clean his house and she does a fine job of it. No, he's looking for a wife, I can tell you that. We have only kissed and hugged but he doesn't kiss me the way he might kiss his sister who, God bless her, is still going strong at 90, having been widowed twice herself. If I had a brother, I'd introduce him to her. A very nice woman."

Father Brennan decided he probably had to get to the point.

"Margaret Mary, your intended has had sex for most of his adult life and this will be something new for you. I imagine you have some idea what to expect if Paddy is still able to make love. Some men at his age aren't capable of doing that any more. You are probably aware of the physical aspects of marriage, I'm sure, and what will be expected of Paddy in the marital embrace." Marital embrace was another term the clergy used when discussing sexual intercourse. 

Margaret Mary took a deep breath, uncrossed her legs and looked Father Brennan right in the eye.

"Father, all we have done is kiss and hug but on his birthday Paddy asked me to sit on his lap and give him a big kiss. Well, if he's not healthy enough to have sex, Father, I wish he had taken that crowbar out of his pocket. Scared the dickens out of me. I almost jumped off his lap. Can we get down to business now and set the date. Paddy and I aren't getting any younger." 

Father Brennan coughed, looked at his desk calendar and said "How about four weeks from now? That will give us time to announce the bans of marriage in church and do everything right. And, of course, I'd like to meet Paddy Regan myself so I'll recognize him at the ceremony. I'd hate to make a mistake and marry you off to the best man."

Margaret Mary Kelly left the rectory that day happy to have the date for her wedding set. 

That night, Father Brennan called another priest a few parishes over and told him about the upcoming wedding without mentioning any names.

They both had a bit of a chuckle and marveled at how hope springs eternal in the people of God, whatever their age. 

Then the other priest, before hanging up, said he'd bet the flower girl will be at least 65. 

Donal Mahoney

Petty Literary Money Grubbers

by

Jane Doe

The two most prominent non-performing arts are painting (a genre term that includes all the fine art forms) and writing. An art gallery is a vital business that links the artist to the buyer. Almost all galleries are for profit, paying the artist a percentage of sales. The more well known and desired the artists, they naturally get a larger percentage. The other type of galleries are either not-for-profit, or collectives, with different structures of remuneration. Some artists feel that galleries take an inordinate share of earnings. Many artists resent the semi-closed world of galleries that do not readily accept new artists. This is a relatively traditional arts business, since artists ceased being artisans in the second half of the 19^th century and acquired agents, rather than patrons to promote their work. Of course, except for dealers in old masters, a gallery’s selection of artists to represent is purely subjective.

Writing, until the advent of electronic publishing, was not entirely dissimilar to the art business. Publishing houses issued the books of their writers and paid them royalties. Invariably, except for successful commercial fiction writers, it became difficult for serious writers to earn a livelihood by their craft. This certainly urged many of them to seek refuge in hospitable academic environments that offered a modicum of security and captive audiences. Then came the proliferation of emags.

In an amusing historical note, in the 1970’s, the eruption of Off- Off Broadway theater ventures allowed, for the first time, inexperienced youngsters to start their own companys with little or no professional or business know-how. At this time, the average life span of a new theater company was three to four months. This confirmed the good sense of the National Endowment of the Arts that required a group to be in existence for at least two years before requesting funding. Then they would face the standard of artistic excellence, and if they were denied grants, they believed it was for not belonging to an old boy’s (or girl’s) theater network.

Then the children of the publishing arts multiplied. And no longer had to serve demanding, underpaid apprenticeships at traditional publishing houses to learn the publishing business. While everyone else is struggling in America in the twenty first century of economic malaise for the diminishing middle class, the liberal arts college degree finally had its era of utility. Formerly, the most useless preparation for the future, now the lib-arts grad could use simple computer skills, simple art skills, simple writing skills to start a magazine. By 2015 there were over 5,000 emags, most of them run by well-meaning, but ill-prepared dabblers.

Many of the nouveau arrivistes pressured their writers to subscribe to their magazines, thus hoping to pay for their new business. At the same time, tens of thousands of new writers, urgent for publication, collaborated with their new publisher by paying for subscriptions. In the 1930’s, if a writer self-published, or was published by a vanity press, it was either a joke, or an embarrassment. Now this phenomenon, a torrent of writers and a host of epublishers, formed a low-yield symbiosis. This was a union of true ignorance. The publishers believed they were entitled to money from the writers. The writers thought it was normal to support the magazines that published them.

The worst offenders in this pay to play arena are the contest sponsors. Even the well-established, supposedly responsible literary magazines and the university publications reap income by offering contests with an entry fee, that attracts participants hoping for recognition far more then prize money. Many of them also yearn for the cash. The practice of charging writers to be published is unprincipled, exploitive and deleterious in the effect on the mentalities of writers and publishers alike.

In an era of dominant visuals in entertainment, and unrestricted access to the internet, the performing arts are fading. Painting (including all the other facets of fine art) has become so diverse in form and technique, that it is no longer accessible to the basic culture seeker. Writing has expanded more then any other art form because it requires the least skill, the least investment in materials. Great writing has faded away in the publishing climate of mass market sales. Throughout history, culture has arisen and departed, often linked ot the life and death of empires. It is no tragedy that opera, ballet, classical music, classical theater are fading away in our society. Change in cultural values is inevitable, despite the reluctance of certain participants to accept the new reality.

It is appropriate for writers to realize that they should be paid for their work, rather then paying to be published. There should be some kind of standard to determine remuneration. Certainly the merit of the work should be considered. The reality is that very few of us know the difference between good and bad art, let alone good and bad writing. Liberal arts graduates, deluded into assuming they are educated, do not comprehend that if they want to be publishers, it’s like any other arts venture. It’s a business. If someone wants to be a publisher, they should learn how to finance their business, not expect to be funded by writers. Writers should learn not to participate in publication’s allurements, where they pay to be in print. It is improbable that either group will have the common sense to reverse their erroneous behavior patterns, but they should certainly be made aware of the impropriety of payment for publication.

An amusing afterthought. In semi-professional and community theater, where there is scarcely any money to pay artists, musicians insist: ‘Musicians must be paid’.

Jane Doe has an M.A. in poetry from an Ivy League University. She teaches English and writing at a community college. Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines. She recently ended her association with a magazine over the issue of charging fees for reading submissions.

Young Priest, Old Priest

Everyone in the neighborhood was surprised when Bill McIntyre entered the seminary to study for the priesthood. He had been dating girls since early in high school and had been engaged since graduating from college to a lovely young lady. He often spoke about wanting to have a big family since he himself had been an only child. But something happened in that relationship and Bill and his girlfriend broke up.

"I always wanted brothers," Bill had told his best friend, Adam Moskowitz. They had played basketball together in high school and had remained close friends, meeting at the local delicatessen every couple of weeks to wolf down corned beef sandwiches, Adam's on rye, Bill's on dark pumpernickel.

"At least it's not white bread" is all that Adam would ever say. 

Adam was studying to become a rabbi. Adam was the first one Bill told about his plans to become a priest.

"A rabbi can get married, Bill. You'll be single for life. The priesthood is wonderful but it might not be the right place for a guy who wanted to have a big family," Adam said.

But a year after his broken engagement, Bill entered the seminary. After six years of studying philosophy and theology, he was ordained. His first assignment was at a very busy church where several priests were on staff. He was the newbie in every respect.

At St. Adalbert's, Father Bill was more or less adopted by an elderly priest, Father O'Brien, who showed him the ropes of what was expected of any priest, young or old. They became close friends, sharing a love of chess, which they often played into the night, matching wits and having great conversations. Father Bill always said that he had learned a lot from Father O'Brien, especially what it was like to have been a priest for 65 years. After two years at St. Adalbert's, Father Bill thought he knew Father O'Brien well enough to ask him a serious question. 

Since he still found women attractive but had not strayed from his vows, Father Bill thought Father O'Brien might be able to help him with a little advice. Constant prayer had helped a lot but he thought an old priest like Father O'Brien, who was 90, might have some special insight. So during one of their many chess games, Father Bill spoke up.

"Father, at what age does celibacy become easier. At what age do women begin not to look as good as they do at my age?"

Father O'Brien leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, ran his hand through his hair, and sipped his Coke. Finally he took a deep breath and said,

"Father Bill, that's a tough question. I don't think I can help you but I know a priest who might. I'll call Father Moriarity in the morning. I'm only 90. Father Moriarity is 95.”

Donal Mahoney

——————————————

Donal Mahoney spent 19 consecutive years and never once was tempted to be a priest. He has worked with a lot of them, though, and never found lemon among them. No doubt others have.

Dancing Became Poetry

It’s called the “Feis," a Gaelic word pronounced “fesh.” It’s a dance contest held annually in different cities in the United States. It’s the “Super Bowl” for young Irish step-dancers. When I competed in the Feis back in the Fifties, there were dancers there from the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and other countries. They took planes, trains and buses to get there to compete, usually in a stadium or some other large venue. 

The best Irish fiddlers provided the music. The judges were old men, retired dancers themselves, serious as clerics, sitting in trios at scoring tables in front of the platforms where the contestants competed. 

The audience sat in the stands or on folding chairs out on the field near the dance platforms. They chatted when there was no music but were silent during the competition. All you could hear then was the beat of the feet and the fiddlers playing their hearts out.

The Feis began with the various solo dancing contests--reels, jigs, and hornpipes. Toward the end of the day, teams of dancers, male and female couples, competed in the three-hand reel, six-hand reel and the eight-hand jig. This was a serious competition. Dancers practiced all year, hoping to take home trophies and medals.

In 1956 I was 18 and had been dancing competitively for at least 10 years. I started taking lessons early in grammar school to please my father who had emigrated to Chicago from Ireland. In his part of Ireland, step-dancing was at least a sport if not a religion. 

In the United States it was mostly girls who took Irish dancing. But my sister, try as she might, was unable to do it. 

I happened to be in the basement the afternoon my father, once a fine dancer himself, tried to teach her the first step of the reel. To show her up, as brothers are sometimes wont to do, I danced the first step perfectly, just by watching my father do it, and from that moment on, I had to take Irish dancing lessons. 

I can still hear him—after he saw me do the step my sister could not do--hollering up the basement stairs to my mother.

“Molly, he’s got it!” 

I was in fourth grade then and danced competitively until the age of 21. Over the years I had come to love the music, the intricate footwork and the competition. And it didn’t hurt that the footwork helped in playing basketball.

From my father’s point of view, the goal of Irish dancing was two-fold—perfection, in that the feet were not to miss a beat, and victory, in that not a contest was to be lost. 

Life being what it is, he was often disappointed. 

The interesting thing is that the music of Irish reels, jigs, hornpipes instantly appealed to me. I felt it in my whole body right from the start even if I didn’t like all the practice time involved, time I would rather have spent playing ball. 

The teacher, a man also from Ireland, not far from my father’s hometown, was a former boxer as was my father. Needless to say, they were of like mind. So we children had to train for a dancing contest as if for a championship fight or close to it. A lesson might take half an hour followed by two hours of practice. And there was no air-conditioning back then except in movie theaters.

It just so happened that in my class we had four boys, all the same age, myself included. We grew up together, dancing every year in contests when not playing ball or doing other things boys normally do. 

In Irish dancing, boys were a rarity. No other dancing school had four boys so they could not field a “real” eight-hand jig, as it was called, with four boys and four girls. Most schools had eight girls in their eight-hand jig. But without boys, an all-girls team in 1956 probably lost points on optics alone if nothing else.

We had four boy/girl couples and we had been dancing as a team for years by the time the contest at Fordham University rolled around in 1956. 

We figured we’d take the train to New York from Chicago and whip every team we competed against, no matter what state or country they were from. After all, we had beaten all the other teams from other Irish dancing schools in Chicago and some other mid-western cities.

That year the Feis was held in the August heat in Fordham's stadium and our eight-hand jig beat everybody, as we thought, except for an “old team” (four couples in their 30s) from Ireland we knew nothing about.  

We had seen them the night before in an Irish pub where fiddlers played nonstop the best of Irish music and everyone was dancing and hollering the way the Irish do when properly lubricated. 

The four “old” men on the Irish eight-hand jig team had been drinking a bit, shall we say, and dancing with girls from other teams, including ours. And they were still dancing, finally with their own partners, long after our team had gone to our hotel rooms to get some sleep for the competition the next day.

But after watching that Irish team dance for fun in the pub that night, I realized that when the right feet were involved, dancing could be poetry. 

Although the “old” Irish team had been drinking all night, they had sobered up by noon the next day when the competition began. We were dancing to win and they were still dancing for fun. We didn’t miss a beat and they didn’t either but they had literally an extra hop in their step, a leap if you will, that we had never seen. 

What’s more, they smiled when they danced and demonstrated an unaffected grace. 

In contrast, our team of boys and girls looked as serious as novices from a seminary and convent. We were kids trying hard and they were adult dancers having a wonderful time. They took the trophy and gold medals back to Ireland and we took our silver medals back to Chicago. 

We had been trounced and we knew it. And there was nothing we could have done, before or after the contest, to beat that Irish team. 

I can still see one of the men I had first seen in the pub the night before. He was as bald as the balls on the pool table and wore an Irish kilt. But that man could dance. He didn’t miss a beat, drunk or sober. His feet on the floor sounded like iambic pentameter with a little thunder added here and there for emphasis, especially at the end.  

Reels, jigs and hornpipes are still in my blood although it has been decades since I danced, for fun or competitively. When I hear the music now, I sometimes am moved almost to tears. It's the only music that ever really got to me. 

That was a long time ago but every once in a while I wish I were young enough to get up on that platform at Fordham University and dance again, compete again, and then I remember that bald Irishman in his kilt and I know that once again I’d be taking home a silver medal.

Dancing for fun beats dancing to win. I learned that in 1956 watching a team from Ireland leap and not miss a beat as the fiddlers played their hearts out. The three judges knew the winners as soon as they saw that Irish team. They knew, in the heat of that August day, they had seen dancing suddenly become poetry. 

Donal Mahoney

A Note to Young Writers

Over the years I have been accused of many things in real life and in the virtual world as well and often deservedly so. Recently, however, I sent a few poems to an editor unknown because samples on his site suggested to me that these particular poems, rejected by other editors as not fit for their sites, might find a home there. One never knows and can only try.

These poems were scabrous enough, I thought, to have a chance at this site but they lacked profanity, sex and violence. I am neither in favor of nor opposed to profanity, sex or violence but I don’t knowingly traffic in any of those when it comes to writing. 

Sex is too easy to write about, I feel, and profanity seems an easy way out when the right word can’t be found. Violence I don’t think I have ever dealt with although I have dealt with the prelude to violence as well as its aftermath. I guess it’s all a matter of taste. 

Nevertheless, I decided to send these poems to this particular site because I thought they might fit there. No cost to send an email overseas. It’s not like when I started out decades ago and you would have to weigh envelopes and affix overseas postage not to have the postmaster return the envelopes damned as bearing insufficient postage. 

Editors vary as greatly as writers in taste and patience and I speak as a former print editor bearing the scars of many years of experience. I remember writing acceptances and rejections and receiving pleasant and irate responses. But the response I received in the rejection of this batch of poems accused me of something I had never been accused of before. 

The editor told me in no uncertain terms my poems were too “nuanced” for his site and left it at that. 

If you write for many years and send a lot of stuff out, you should eventually become less elated by acceptances and less dejected by rejections. But when I received this particular rejection, I thought what if a young writer starting out received a rejection that said his or her poems were too nuanced. 

Rightly or wrongly I've always thought nuance was a good thing in writing poetry, fiction or an essay. 

At the same time I think there is a place for tough poems that can be nuanced if that is the right word to use. Such poems may cause some editors dyspepsia and I have no problem when they send them flying back. At the same time I would never consciously inject profanity, blatant sex or hard-core violence into a poem. I have never felt poetry was the place for that kind of thing. Perhaps that comes from reading too much T.S. Eliot as a young man and not enough Charles Bukowski. 

As someone who grew up admiring Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso and most of the writers in The Beatnik Generation, you would think I would find some merit in the writings of Bukowski but try as I might—and I have tried off and on over the years--I have not found anything that made me want to read more of him. Yet there are writers today who think of Bukowski the way Buddhists think of the Dalai Lama and Catholics think of Pope Francis. 

There are more than a few sites that are almost dedicated to Bukowski but editors at many of those sites don’t seem to demand imitation of him in the poems they publish while some seem to like that kind of thing. And I think an inordinate admiration of Bukowski at this particular site is why my efforts were judged “too nuanced.” But as my wife often reminds me I could be wrong once again.

In any event, I hope young writers learn early on to accept rejections for what they are. Either accurate because something is wrong with the poem or simply because the poem is not suitable for that site. 

Or maybe the editor has too big a backlog or simply doesn’t like your content or your style. 

Or maybe he or she doesn’t like you. Not everyone does, you know. I don’t think any writer should strive to be everybody’s friend. 

The editor who does all the work on any site has the right to have the site reflect what he wants his efforts to accomplish. 

So whenever you get a rejection, look the poem over, make changes or not, and send it out elsewhere. If the poem has merit, it will likely find a home somewhere. But try to pick potential homes carefully—almost as carefully as you might pick a spouse. 

Donal Mahoney

Chicken Breast or Rump Roast

Freddie and Fern were an old couple, a very old couple if truth be told, but on the matter of age, the truth seldom surfaced. Their kids were grown and gone and had families of their own. All of them lived in different cities and two of them had even asked their parents to sell the house and buy a smaller place near where they lived. But Freddie and Fern, despite all their aches and pains, were an independent couple and they liked their privacy. Seeing their grandchildren was nice but living close enough to have to babysit them, that was quite another matter.

Most evenings Fern would sit in her rocker and work crossword puzzles and Freddie would sit back in his recliner and watch whatever sport was in season. They were very different people but in 50 years of marriage they had always gotten along well. Each was solicitous of the other’s needs. Always had been. But as age encroaches, certain needs change and others remain the same, life being what it is.

Fern, for example, had arthritis pretty bad. Her back was always acting up on her. From day to day, it was just a matter of how bad it was. 

Freddie had arthritis in both legs but he could still get around pretty good for a man with his ailments, too good sometimes as far as Fern was concerned, especially when Freddie would get that look in his eye. Sure enough, he would ask her if the next time she had to go to the bathroom, she’d bring him back a Coke from the fridge. And, of course, she always did.

But Fern always knew it wasn’t just the Coke Freddie wanted. The old goat wanted to watch her walk down the hallway. He told her many times she had more bounce to the ounce now than when she was young. 

Hardly, Fern thought. Still, it was nice to hear him say that. But if Freddie looked as though he was going to be pestering her that night, Fern always wanted to go to KFC for dinner first. And if she asked Freddie to go there, he would always oblige, hoping everything would go well later that evening.

On this particular evening, though, when Fern brought Freddie his Coke, he seized the moment and asked her if she wanted to go to KFC. Fern hesitated because her back was bothering her something terrible. She didn’t think when they got home she would be able to give Freddie the dessert he was looking for. But she did like her KFC chicken, two plump chicken breasts with all the trimmings, so she agreed to go. She could just see the pond of gravy in the well of her mashed potatoes. And butter slathered all over her green beans. 

At the restaurant, Fern ordered her two pieces of breast meat, as usual, along with mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans. Plus a side of cole slaw because she had promised the doctor on her last visit that she would eat more fiber. 

Freddie, who preferred any cut of beef to chicken, asked for his usual order of gizzards and fries. A chewy gizzard was really the only part of the chicken he could tolerate. With ketchup on his fries, he was a reasonably contented diner. 

When they had finished eating, Fern knew that her back was so bad she wouldn’t be able to meet Freddie’s needs when they got home. She told him nicely in a code they shared that her back was killing her and that she was afraid there would be no breast meat for Freddie that evening.

Freddie hesitated for a moment and then asked Fern if she thought she would be able to roll over and sleep on her tummy. Fern said probably so because when her back was this bad, that’s what she usually had to do. Couldn’t sleep any other way.

Freddie smiled, sipped the last of his Coke, and said that was good to know. A little rump roast would make a fine late night snack.

Donal Mahoney