a haiku
Jimmy was visiting his father when Mr. Crenshaw called to say Mrs. Bittles had died the night before of a sudden heart attack.
Great Dane out walking day after the funeral small widow next door Donal Mahoney
In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A soc...
A poor man comes to the door after the storm last winter and asks if he can have something to eat if he shovels the walk. You say forget about the snow.
Summer evenings after the news at 6 p.m. the Widow Murphy comes out of her tiny bungalow and sits on her front porch swing
You’re an old man in a nice suit and tie out with your wife at a fancy function with nice people
Beneath the bowling-alley bar marquee the rain tonight hammers off the concrete.
If you’ve seen a cockatoo up close in a cage or at a zoo you may have noticed how a cockatoo looks at you.
Sometimes she sits there and listens to him. Sometimes he sits there and listens to her. Sometimes they know
A minister’s son married a deacon’s daughter after a long courtship. It was difficult at times doing everything right
“Tell Pablo I cannot see!” says the man in the Picasso painti… as I pass by, program in hand. The man has a hairy nose where each of his ears should be.
Ginny didn’t know if it was a large pond or a small lake in the middle of the beautiful park where she had been hired right after high school to help with maintenance of the grounds. No...
Jill’s assignment as a new reporter was to interview an old bell ringer standing next to a red kettle outside a Walmart. Her editor had told her the man has been ringing the bell every ...
A corner sentinel for 40 years, Charlie’s Diner is the only landmark in a neighborhood of blue-collar people who love their burgers thick
Thirty years ago, long before ISIS started executing Kurds, Muslims and Christians, I hired a Pakistani Muslim as an art director in Chicago. I was an Irish Catholic editor putting out ...