It’s an old clock hanging on a wall in a small room on the third floor. We go up there

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

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...

Elmo has spent 40 years cutting hair in a little shop in a country town along the Mississippi. Vegetables and meat

When Homer stubs his toe or bumps his elbow, the pain is always piercing but Homer’s a pious man so swearing isn’t for him.

He wants to do certain things he should have done before old age and illness reaped their harve… The doctor gives him days perhaps a week to breathe

I was out of control, spinning on the whirligig of youth, giddy to be caught in what Kerouac called “the whole mad swirl

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

They’re widows, old and gray, bent over a quilting frame, sewing to meet a deadline for the next raffle

Anyone might have what you need if she’s choice in your eye. She can be big or small provided she has

In your mind you hear words snarling all day long but no poem arrives. The words are locked

This morning I woke up early feelin’ good, feelin’ the way I felt 50 years ago, no aches, no pains, can’t wait to shower, hop on the El, go back to work,

Forget the fall equinox. Fall arrives when all the moths that dance on summer nights around the porch light disappear when the first cold dawn appears.