In my all-boys school sixty years ago there were two boys who were different. All four years they walked to classes together, books

Someone has to cut the grass Molly tells Bill dozing off in his recliner too weary to cut it. For years a vet from Vietnam

I turn the porch light on at 4 a.m… to see if a miracle’s occurred and the paper’s landed somewhere in the snow blanketing our lawn. Instead I see a clump on the mat

That my parents were Irish immigrants is probably the most significant factor in my writing life. The English expelled my father from Ireland around 1920 at age 18 or so for running gun...

It was a mistake to take home economics out of the curriculum at so many high schools, says Wally, a retired teacher who has an ongoing interest in education. He taught high school for ...

Next to me on the train going home to the suburbs is another guy stuck in a suit reading his paper, a normal-looking guy

I never remember year to year but then some morning in March I’ll walk out in the yard

Wally and Stan neighbors on the same block for 30 years never had a problem until Wally asked Stan over

Fred visits Bill every month at the facility he’s been in for year… Age and booze brought Bill there. He’s still strapped to his bed so he can’t go wandering again

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

You won’t find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with y… said Joseph Joubert, a French writer whose day job was working for Napoleon.

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,

If a marriage doesn’t work out you get a divorce and look for someone else. If a poem doesn’t work out you put it in a folder and

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

Her corded belt python tight around a tiny waist makes her blooms bigger brighter as they unfold