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,

Maury’s wife frets about growing old withering up and sagging so it’s up to Maury

What we are not who we are matters to the world. Who we are not what we are

A tractor trailer with slats and m… pulls up at a city slaughterhouse. The driver pulls the wrong lever and two thousand pounds of trotting cattle go for an easy

There’s always something. Like the growth you found under your arm showering this morning but you decided to go

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...

Inferno of a summer day Mother’s dozing Tommy, tiny, three, paring knife in hand tiptoes out, flops

He asked and so I told him. The “cancer” poems stem from cancer in the family. Daughter’s terminal. Son’s a five-year survivor.

We do our best to avoid the Zika Virus. We smack mosquitoes and avoid tanned folks just back from two weeks in the tropics.

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

You drive down the same country road every day at dawn and see through plumes of dust

My parents were far from preachy. They went to church separately and I went to the children’s service

Despite the digital holocaust of computers and cell phones, Newberry Library remains the Vatican of books with the right sounds,

How are things, Adolph? This is Brian, from NBC. Thanks for the interview. It will air in September if the network brings me back.

Jesus, can we talk? Some folks say you’re coming back any day now but many of them have been saying that for years. They say it could happen tomorrow, or maybe next week, and they’ve al...