In two more hours I’ll have to sh… shave and coffee-prop my lids and otherwise prepare for day. It’… and now the barkeep, Griggs, is rushing me, the first

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

“If you don’t like the gun, my dea… I can exchange it for a negligee b… I’ve given you many negligees. I think a gun’s important to have around the house

The two weeks I spent in that small town on assignment, I saw no blacks except for two older women regal in every way,

Lightning bolts in childhood can scar the soul forever. They’re a satanic baptism when the minister’s your father, mother, brother, sister,

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

Someone you respect does something that sticks in your craw like a fish bone dining in a crab shack. You try to cough it up

He’s not among the quick and not among the dead. He’s somewhere in between he tells anyone who stops his wheelchair in the halls

He publishes poems by writers who find no publishers elsewhere. They suffer rejection and he gives them hope.

The old poet has agreed to read his poems in Hanley Hall if a student will push his wheelchair on stage. Agreed. And students must agree not to ask

The alarm clock screams at 5 a.m. and I get up to attend a funeral 50 miles away, a long drive back to a corner of Chicago once rife with corned beef and cabbage but

You think he’d be more grateful. Neither rich nor poor he’s never wanted for anything. He’s always had what he needs but never had any gratitude

She’s been making quilts for half a century and he’s been making poems that long as well and every now and then he brings a chocolate shake to her place

Annie has a nice washing machine n… but she remembers the one her mother had with the wringer, the old-fashioned kind. Her mother took in washing and whe…