BY GENE MAHONEY
(Scintillating Publications, 2007, 26 pages)http://www.freewebs.com/scintillatingpublications/
Before Gene Mahoney is even a third of
the way through his opening poem in The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, he has invoked the spirits of Genet, Celine and Rimbaud, just so there will be no mistaking exactly how depraved things are about to become for the rest of the collection.
First we get a small roll call, presumably
quick portraits of the Thai lady-boys who haunt Bangkok’s rough trade districts (Chynna Blue, Thai Niki, Zola and Nha Trang among others) whom Mahoney weaves into his haunted night fever dreams, before kicking into high gear with poems like Postmodern Love, 5 A.M (which is an all time classic love poem/flash fiction piece) and Aubade:
“that morning in Bangkok
the pulverizing pile-drivers
of the high rise developers
woke me from a dead sleep;
their thunderous thumping
didn’t faze her in the least.
As the harsh sunlight
pushed through the heavy
hotel drapes, jealous shadows
fell across her sleeping face.
Childish questions jumped
up, began running in circles
through my pounding head:
Why hasn’t she shown me
her sexy new underwear?
Who’s she saving them for?
I threw back the covers,
bolted into the next room.
I drew back the curtains,
looked down at the construction
site, pile drivers slamming
steel into the earth.My stomach
knotted painfully.
When she finally joined me
at the window
and asked what was wrong,
I replied: “It’s nothing, just stupid
thoughts ripping through my gut
like rusty knives.”
Mahoney goes from portraitist to the mode
used by so many talents in the small press, dressing his short stories up as poems, and in the world of dress up he depicts the form lends itself beautifully. The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys could stand on its own as a single poem (again, like so many small press chaps.) Mahoney balances his little blocks of sometimes joyous, sometimes euphoric with lean, sharp proclamations:
I pushed
my penis
into this
pretty
black
boy’s ass
and
rode
it like a
redneck
biker
rides
his favorite
mule
in the
Mississippi
moonlight.
Mules in the Mississippi Moonlight
The effect of these poems arrangements
creates a rhythm that works like the effect between a long, bittersweet caresses punct- uated by hot, fast & nasty exchanges of bodily fluids. Not particularly a new technique in the small press, but Mahoney’s setting of his (temp- orary) expatriate stories in the exotic East and his craftsmanship are impressive. He is clearly an accomplished, “plain-spoken” poet, not unlike Doug Draime or Michael Grover. The bottom line is you don’t have to be gay, transgendered, or just curious about Lady-boys to appreciate the broken hearted darkness in these pieces.
Last update : 30-09-2008 20:22
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