The old poet has agreed to read his poems in Hanley Hall if a student will push his wheelchair on stage. Agreed. And students must agree not to ask

Next to me on the train going home to the suburbs is another guy stuck in a suit reading his paper, a normal-looking guy

After the TV mavens had their say the gnomes crept out of their cave… spoke and returned to their caves. Thunder struck, hell broke loose and the mavens came back on TV

His wife takes him to dinner as she always does on his birthday wearing bright red lipstick, a color she detests but he likes.

Snow on Christmas Day. As I walk out with bird seed birds cry Santa’s here. Donal Mahoney

Never speak ill of the dead, his father always said, and his father was a pastor who preached from the pulpit. That’s why whenever

Jimmy and Billy, two young men in kindergarten, went home from school every day just before noon. They lived in a small town in Nebraska, in the middle of farm country. It was the 1950s...

The two weeks I spent in that small town on assignment, I saw no blacks except for two older women regal in every way,

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

One has to be careful campaigning door-to-door. One doesn’t know who’s behind any door. Could be someone

A rainy Sunday and Pastor Smith is in his pulpit bellowing to the congregation, “I hope you understand

For some nervous wrecks a pill or two might help. For others

An odd bobcat my father was looked more like a Siamese asleep in his recliner

In a long marriage couples communicate in so many ways, often in silence. In recent years I rise very early and now leave post-it notes