Midnight in San Francisco. Yoshiko is 93 and she can’t sleep so she sits in her recliner and nibbles on a rice cake,

Fancy spam emails I don’t mind nor the ones cobbled in broken English from someone who says he’s with a bank overseas

In 1920, my father, 16, was a guest of the British government. He was a prisoner of their forces occupying Ireland at the time, a group called the Black and Tans. One day he and seven o...

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...

Three sisters single in their 40s gather 'round the fire on a night of thunder to figure out which sister

When you’re a pharmacist you don’t ask customers how they’re doing. You know from the meds they pick up

In a yard abandoned this winter when the owner moved grass is growing this spring

Melba comes home from the grocery… She was walking away from the dair… He was there with a pregnant girl… He said to Melba, “Ma’m, is this… Melba told him it was margarine.

On holidays I hear from Paul, who’s 80 if a day, who may have won his war on poverty without help from his friends. He won’t accept a cent.

Sometimes it helps to learn a relative has died a close relative you haven’t seen in years and didn’t plan to see again because

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

My wife’s amazed when I station myself at the computer writing this or that despite a hound dog

Zenobia Jackson told Officer Murphy that her husband, Rufus, was 73 years old and “a wonderful man when he was awake” but for the past year he had been jerking “something terrible” duri...

After all these years my wife at the ironing board, perfect in panties. Donal Mahoney

Father the chameleon was lime gree… the first day I saw him peering in… my crib smiling and he remained lime green until kindergarten when a nun called the house and sa…