There’s a force that makes a boulder hard to push up a hill. And there’s always a boulder and always a hill when it comes to helping the poor find something

Great Dane out walking day after the funeral small widow next door Donal Mahoney

When Normal Norman takes his seat in Room 220 in Dumbach Hall to hear the eminent Dr. Engelhard… recite Beowulf again, Norman knows that he can suck

Being poor on our patch of land was better than being poor all the years I’ve lived in the ci… We had a couple of cows, a rooster and seven hens.

I was out of control, spinning on the whirligig of youth, giddy to be caught in what Kerouac called “the whole mad swirl

A moment ago, in a flicker of pique, with a wave of the hand, I dispersed them. Glorious birds,

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

Better take his wife to lunch after what he said yesterday. A slip of the tongue. But where to take her? The Chinese buffet?

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

Loud preacher bellows on Sunday what a silent praying mantis knows Donal Mahoney

Fred’s a reasonable man something he takes pride in. Just the other night before he threw a dish against the wall while

In St. Louis young blacks carry guns like cell phones and use them often to shoot each other, as we read in the daily paper

A corner sentinel for 40 years, Charlie’s Diner is the only landmark in a neighborhood of blue-collar people who love their burgers thick

It may have been the devil himself who prompted the kids in my schoolyard back in 1947 to chant “Patsy Foley’s roly-poly from eating too much ravioli.” At first, no one could remember w...

A neighbor lady I hadn’t seen in a year I heard was bedridden. Her former husband dropped by, asked if I’d to take in her trash… when I brought in my own.