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

Some never hear of him and likely never will— pygmies in Africa, aborigines in Tasmania, the indigenous in South America.

Day and night preachers hawk the Message of the Cross on television. Once a month they pause and beg for money for

So this Mick on the next stool, who’s as serious as Yeats but looks like Wilde, stares at me, with eyes crossed,

Bill’s been seeing a therapist for years trying to get his life on track but all he talks about is his many regrets in a life

Midnight in San Francisco. Yoshiko is 93 and she can’t sleep so she sits in her recliner and nibbles on a rice cake,

A corner sentinel for 40 years, Charlie’s Diner is the only landmark in a neighborhood of blue-collar people who love their burgers thick

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

With a smile, the POTUS tangoes in Argentina while in Belgium and the rest of the World people try not to cry.

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

When you have an hour to live what matters then is Christ in a pyx in the vest pocket

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

The last visitor before I sleep is always the old priest puffing up the stairs to my door, a wine cask under each arm, a loaf of pumpernickel in his teet…

It wasn’t long after her mother died my wife asked if her father could live with us. We had an empty apartment upstairs. Dad wouldn’t be much trouble, she said. He was old now and had d...

Rudy in his wheelchair gets around pretty good. He has a good job and transportation via a special van. He shops at local stores and everyone is nice except at the drug store where the ...