When Martha gets home from cooking class this afternoon, Martin will be gone after 30 years of marriage. Martha won’t know why

They moved in on Sunday, a bright and sunny day, the first black family on the bloc… They drove up in two U-Hauls and slowly carried furniture

Mae mailed Christmas cards today, fewer again this year because death has made her address book a skeleton. She has a son in Russia

You think you got problems? You probably do but would you trade with Phillip, a Vietnam vet who still thinks Agent Orange lurks in

Planned Parenthood surgeons deplored the murder of Cecil the Lion. They wonder how a

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

You were a little older than three the day your father taught you how to pee, standing up. Your father trumpeted your triumph and your mother laughed in the kit…

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

Used to be she’d tell him what to get at the grocery store and he always brought it back. Now she makes a list.

No one goes to the patio now except at night when Ann goes out to spread old bread and sunflower seed on the small table for birds

Fuzzy wasn’t my cat although I fed him every morning at four o’clock for 10 years. He was my wife’s cat, loved to sit on her lap, be petted, jump down and rub his head against her feet....

When Normal Norman takes his seat in Room 220 in Dumbach Hall to hear the eminent Dr. Engelhard… recite Beowulf again, Norman knows that he can suck

A long time ago you bothered him somehow. Since then he has bothered you back. You don’t know how or

After services on Sunday the old Marlboro man puts his Bible under his arm and talks to his pastor through a hole in his neck.