Some say when daffodils shoot up Spring is here. It’s safe to put away your boots and shovels.

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

Other than death there’s no way to escape them unless you’re a hummingbird

An hour before dawn the paper is out on the lawn white in the moonlight a trumpet dozing after a long night in a jazz bar

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

It started with a smirk she managed to arrest. It returned seconds later in a sneer she pulled back but then it appeared again

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

Rose was a plain girl from a small town. She sang in the choir, never missed Bible study, left for the big city

Melanie cried for hours the day a drunk driver ran over her dog a week after she had an abortion. She loved that dog so much she told her mother she knew

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

A rainy Sunday and Pastor Smith is in his pulpit bellowing to the congregation, “I hope you understand

Sheep are by a goat while cattle are like swine, prodded, ye… cattle go by hammer while swine are by the hind leg hung then swung about to spigot.

What we are not who we are matters to the world. Who we are not what we are