Signs in Windows
In 1920 he came on a boat
from Ireland and found
his way through Ellis Island.
He found a room
in a boarding house
catering to his kind and
went looking for a job
but found instead signs
in windows saying
“No Irish Need Apply.”
A cemetery asked him to
dig graves and lower the dead.
In America today
there are no signs like that.
Black and brown
apply and whites
sometimes hire them.
My father was white.
But in 1920 his brogue
was a long rope that
almost lynched him.
- Donal Mahoney 2017
Donal Mahoney, a product of Chicago, lives in exile now in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and Commonweal.
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