When Bill was a lad his parents preached that Scripture was the truth. Decades later now Bill still believes that.

He’s a vet from Vietnam who won’t say much about what happened over there except to say his problem began with Agent Orange,

Last night my recliner broke. I used the lever to lean back and I went way back, almost heels over head. A shock. I hate going to the recliner store

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

After Yeats and Heaney, you wonder when the new one will come galloping out of Dublin or perhaps from yet another farm

This senior citizen whose face is Rushmore still squats with pigeons on the steps of the Rogers Park Masonic Templ… She wears a shawl this snowy day

America has no caste system but America has castes. Like every other nation America has its rich and poor with everyone else sardined

That my parents were Irish immigrants is probably the most significant factor in my writing life. The English expelled my father from Ireland around 1920 at age 18 or so for running gun...

I learned a murmuration is a flock of starlings whirling and turning in the sky, changing directions in a second, flying back again, blackening

Faye gives Fred next door her sister’s number to call in case Faye dies. Faye’s 94 and feels okay. Her sister’s 90 and Fred’s

Carnage rolls across the sand amid the silence of imams Women raped,

Thirty years I’ve lived in Missou… with its major threat for an earth… So far no problems but experts say the big one could arrive any day. California’s lovely but with its q…

In a life with many valleys and a few mountaintops Alvin has met many people he thought were normal and others he thought not.

He doesn’t understand distressed j… Designer jeans with rents and tear… look like the rags he grew up in wearing other people’s discards. His mother got his jeans from a ch…