America has two kinds of migrants, those with money and those with hope, a farmer’s wife told me the day I stopped to buy some eggs.

Sometimes it helps to learn a relative has died a close relative you haven’t seen in years and didn’t plan to see again because

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

Willie in his 80s now hadn’t made sense in years. His wife understood his grunts from the recliner where she propped him up

In America we say we get the government we deserve. That’s been true for the past eight years.

My boss has a problem with God or rather a problem with me because I believe in God and he doesn’t. Or so we discover

A homeless man hangs himself from a tree at night in the city to close out the year. At dawn a passerby uses

Dubville used to be a quiet town, not that much was going on. The young would move to the city after high school… The elderly would stay because

Our house has a garret I never went up to until I retire… Now I’m up there almost every day unless I have to stay in bed until another spell passes.

After all the tests and the doctor’s explanation she thinks of them not as 20 points of cancer but as 20 rusty nails

Next to me on the train going home to the suburbs is another guy stuck in a suit reading his paper, a normal-looking guy

The mug of tea I drank at dawn, the tea that drove me to the train needs a refill.

You start by throwing things out packing things that will fit in a smaller place, selling stuff that won’t, ignoring the birds because the seed’s run out

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

Sarah makes sandwiches all day, piling meat and trimmings high on pillowy bread she spreads apart before her customers’ eyes. Hardworking men love her sandwiche…