You start by throwing things out packing things that will fit in a smaller place, selling stuff that won’t, ignoring the birds because the seed’s run out

It’s a disgusting thing but Paddy Gilhooley, who knew better as a child, had begun farting in church very early in life. He started in grammar school, many decades ago, long before the ...

Should she write about the wonders of nature and say it’s okay to lie on the beach forever without any sunscreen

Solid middle class he is always has been always will be until tomorrow on the highway

The amount in every paycheck has a period in it. Those who get a paycheck every week dream about seeing a comma three spaces in front of the perio…

In a storefront laundry on North Clark Street brown draperies release this quiet man who has my shirts.

I turn the porch light on because it’s dark when I go out to find the morning paper. It’s still dark when I start back but when I’m on the porch I reach

He slaughters his hamburger steak with a fork and a butter knife, massacres ringlets of onions again and again thumps catsup all over

Some never hear of him and likely never will— pygmies in Africa, aborigines in Tasmania, the indigenous in South America.

When a man’s young, this work is hard but it pays well and he can feed the wife and kids.

You think it’s easy, embalming bodies in these nightmares I have every night, bodies a vulture

Fred and Martha have always voted the same way since their marriage long ago but not this time and Fred wondered why Martha was voting the other way

Unable to sleep Bill watches preachers on TV after midnight. The preachers warn the Saved Satan is coming to get them. Bill wonders why preachers do this…