He’s a vet from Vietnam who won’t say much about what happened over there except to say his problem began with Agent Orange,

If they irritate you and so many do you don’t seek them out until you need them and when you’re through

A student asks the old poet why he has spent so many years writing. The old poet says no one’s asked him that before. He needs a minute to answer.

You take care now, Harold, and don’t slip on the ice looking for a good bookstore on the streets of Chicago. Print is dead, Harold,

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

Loud preacher bellows on Sunday what a silent praying mantis knows Donal Mahoney

Wonder Woman they call Sylvia, who excels at raising money to put child abusers in prison. The money she raises allows attorneys to prosecute

Melanie is from a small town and finds a job in a big city and meets Bill, the man she wants… marry so she calls Alice, her sist… older and married, for advice.

Zenobia Jackson told Officer Murphy that her husband, Rufus, was 73 years old and “a wonderful man when he was awake” but for the past year he had been jerking “something terrible” duri...

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

I wish he had never come out from behind the stove, that spider I stepped on at 4 a.m. He was a big one bothering no one.

It’s Ramadan and late one evening I walk by a mosque and hear little girls laughing on the sidewalk,

A gathering of elders from the local rest home is out for a walk after dusk on canes and walkers admiring roses and lilies

On their 50th anniversary Sammy gave Dolly a necklace and told his darling wife that if they lived long enough one of them would wake