Phone rings. Wilbur answers it. “This is Grace. Is Thelma there?… “No,” says Wilbur. “She’s out won… “You mean wandering about?” ‘No, she used to wander about. No…

For years Rocky’s Diner had always done a great business for breakfast and lunch but his dinner business had fallen off recently as folks moved to the suburbs, got married, died or simp...

After 30 years together, Carol tells me late one evening in the manner of a quiet wife that I have yet to write a poem about her, something she

The poor are hungry in America. Their numbers would fill stadiums throughout this prosperous land. And feral cats are running wild, eating songbirds in our yards,

We have one of those medical plans… my wife and I. The co-pays let us see a doctor, have a procedure, pay for medications. Can’t remembe… ever paying full price. Especially

Sometimes you sit for days sucking yourself in praying the right words will fall in your ear toboggan over the whorls

There’s a football field between u… I’m in one of the end zones bellow… and you’re in the other one bawlin… the cliffs of your cheekbones streaked with mascara.

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

They’re widows, old and gray, bent over a quilting frame, sewing to meet a deadline for the next raffle

They’re usually poor people, sometimes considered the flotsam of society, always in the way at the grocery store,

The media is brimming with reports about the legacy of Barack Obama. He’s accomplished so much it’s tough for experts to name his signature achievement.

Old Sol hires young Abdul, a refugee, to cut his grass and we… Saul tells his neighbor Old Paddy young Abdul does a good job and has a wife and three kids

In a storefront laundry on North Clark Street brown draperies release this quiet man who has my shirts.

Departures from the norm we are. Not just you and me but