So this Mick on the next stool, who’s as serious as Yeats but looks like Wilde, stares at me, with eyes crossed,
Sending out an address change to a friend I haven’t seen in 50 years, I say my wife and I are moving someplace new next month
If you arrive too early at the public library and stand on the steps with Mabel till the doors open
Bill hates to go to parties but he loves to go to wakes. One of the advantages of being old, he says, is that there are fewer parties to go to but a lot more wakes. At parties he finds ...
Fred brought his old comic books and some hard candy to a food pant… and didn’t think much about it. Just a different kind of donation. Maybe somebody would want them.
Fred has been working with an agency called Hunters for the Hungry for five years. During that time, his food bank has received thousands of pounds of venison to feed the poor. This yea...
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
That my parents were Irish immigrants is probably the most significant factor in my writing life. The English expelled my father from Ireland around 1920 at age 18 or so for running gun...
Puerto Rican girl thin, thin, let street lights pour bourbon on your hair, anise on your skin.
Each morning I step from the train and march with the others leaving the station. The weatherman’s warned of rain
Far from the city way out in the country a hot afternoon in high summer as we drive down a bumpy road bouncing one mail box past
It’s time to stop the killing by order of the courts. Time to stop the injections
Wally and Fred voted in the big election and then went to O’Leary’s Bar for a couple of beers. O’Leary’s is where men who work for the city go after every important election. Chicago ha...
When I was in grammar school I knew it was Wednesday when I looked out the window and saw across the street three trash cans at the curb
Thunder and lightning at first, as I understand it, and then the moon will split in half and disappear and the stars will go dark