What if your parents had never met had never married had never yelled at each other

I bring a milkshake every other we… to an old man in a nursing home, a refugee from Germany who paid me 50 cents to cut his grass when I w… a kid in Chicago after WWII.

A group of older men gather once a week to talk about life after a heart attack. Old Len chews tobacco still and tells jokes in a voice so low

Linda’s an animal person who puts her money where her mouth is, owns a ranch outside the city and takes in kittens, puppies, birds that

Wally and Fred voted in the big election and then went to O’Leary’s Bar for a couple of beers. O’Leary’s is where men who work for the city go after every important election. Chicago ha...

They were refugees, too, back in the Forties, settled in Chicago, learned English, some a lot, some a little,

Sometimes you sit for days sucking yourself in praying the right words will fall in your ear toboggan over the whorls

A student asks the old poet why he has spent so many years writing. The old poet says no one’s asked him that before. He needs a minute to answer.

Someone smart told me yesterday you never really know the meaning of a word until

Middle of the night someone’s in the house. Can’t be the wife asleep next to you. She’ll be mad

The weekday Mass at 6 a.m. brings old folks out from bungalows around the church. They move like caterpillars

Redbud and dogwood have blossomed above the tulips and jonquils wher… Alice’s house used to be. A possum and raccoon nose around where the garage was before the to…

First time seeing this doctor, a specialist. Took a month to get an appointment. The waiting room’s packed. I grab the last seat

Two doves on a telephone wire wait tor the blue jays to finish e… bread put out for the birds. When the jays arrived, sparrows fled into the trees

When he was just a boy, they took him to the dump to scavenge, bits of metal, any food that might be eaten. When he became a man,