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

Sarah makes sandwiches all day, piling meat and trimmings high on pillowy bread she spreads apart before her customers’ eyes. Hardworking men love her sandwiche…

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

Spread 'Em for Anyone Edna had always had trouble with men. It started in high school when Ed… big for her age, hosted the soccer… one by one, provided they won.

Miyuki is old enough to have been a child during World War II. Indeed, some of her students are that old as well but they are eager to learn and listen to her carefully. She is a teache...

Smitty isn’t Schulte. He doesn’t drive a Cadillac and doesn’t hit his wife often any more. Schulte, on the other hand,

Two men tall, one from here and one from there, in raincoats at a bus stop,

Day and night preachers hawk the Message of the Cross on television. Once a month they pause and beg for money for

Jill’s assignment as a new reporter was to interview an old bell ringer standing next to a red kettle outside a Walmart. Her editor had told her the man has been ringing the bell every ...

There are poems everywhere but you have to find them, a teacher told my class long ago. I was a kid sitting at a desk, cowlicks sprouting from my scalp,

Two new crutches and two double shots of Bushmills Irish Whiskey enabled Joe Faherty to move from the back seat of Moira Murphy’s 1976 Buick into Eagan’s Funeral Home for Tim McGillicud...

More than 30 years ago the Supreme Court in the United States ruled that if individuals are mentally ill but not criminally insane they cannot be confined to asylums. They must be allow...

My wife likes to garden. She’s crazy about roses, lilies and daisies. She says I should get out in the garden and weed.