Dad hit me only once, an uppercut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height, 5’8,” a fireplug who...

Strapped to his bed in the nursing home, he tells every nurse who comes in and tightens his straps

Time’s a jet plane when you’re young. You go to school get a good job marry someone nice

Everyone who has money should drop it in a vat and anyone who needs money should take what they need a Swede, a Dane and two

I started reading the paper early in grammar school to find the sports scores. It was fun for a child hoping to play

In the glow of the porch light one moth a final fandango nowhere to go

Let me be a star and shine in places darkness dwells or let me be a bell and ring in places

Yours is the first email I opened… I appreciate your suggested revisi… to send the work back once I’ve ma… I can tell you spent a lot of time… I’m afraid, however, that I can’t…

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

Even as a child Charles couldn’t forgive other chi… not for something they had done but rather for who they were. They were inferior and couldn’t he…

Long article in the paper this morning stops Tim from gobbling his bacon and eggs. Bears are starving in the woods. Too many cubs, too little food.

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…

America has two kinds of migrants, those with money and those with hope, a farmer’s wife told me the day I stopped to buy some eggs.

It’s not Clyde who sleeps in a different doorway every night to avoid the cops and it’s not Wayne who sleeps in the