A Caseworker’s Nightmare

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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Two ancient men
named Ruben Kohn
by happenstance
had sleeping rooms
in the Ace Hotel for Men

a flophouse home
to mendicants and drunks,
the mentally impaired
and a few divorced men
paying child support.

When the government said
some mentally impaired folks
were well enough to live
among the general population,
the Ruben Kohns arrived

late one night and they
choked Thomas O’Leary,
divorced and drinking
in his room, who started
singing for all to hear,

“You Kohns are cuckoo!"
No one claimed O’Leary’s body,
and the Kohns were sent away
to different institutions
to live out their lives

far from the circus maximus
of the general population, never
again to hear a normal person
like tenor Thomas O’Leary sing
“You Kohns are cuckoo!”


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.