Millicent was the daughter who danced ballet and sang until she met Butchie on a rainy day. He was in coveralls and cowboy hat and fixed

Ducktail haircut back in the Fifties made you a rebel without a cause with all your friends.

Dad hit me only once, an uppercut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height, 5’8,” a fireplug who...

A row of lilacs covered with a summer snow. Ten white butterflies. Donal Mahoney

They were refugees, too, back in the Forties, settled in Chicago, learned English, some a lot, some a little,

The teacher tells the third grade the order of the seasons cannot be changed. Summer, fall, winter, spring arrive in order, then start over.

Paul’s not a veteran of Vietnam but he goes there in his dreams to watch his brother Tim walk in hazy streams sprayed with Agent Orange before he

A friend in England rings me up and we talk about this and that. He asks if my president’s in touch with all that’s going on and I say he should be in touch, going to

I have a friend, old and retired, who keeps busy helping the poor. Let’s call him Ted because he wants to remain anonymous. Some of his ideas, he says, wouldn’t make many of his neighbo...

No, Freddie can’t say he mourned when his father died and his father’s third wife found Freddie’s number and gave him a call to give him the news. His father had been responsible, worke...

There’s a force that makes a boulder hard to push up a hill. And there’s always a boulder and always a hill when it comes to helping the poor find something

A small city on the outskirts of St. Louis has ordered Alice Hezel to pull the swamp milkweed out of her yard because the city says it’s a weed and weeds aren’t allowed in Maplewood, Mi...

I no longer put things back where they belong. I can’t remember where they came from never mind where

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

In the glow of the porch light one moth a final fandango nowhere to go