Every once in awhile over the last 40 years Ralph wondered what might have happened to the guy who had moved in with the mother of his children and drank all the time. He remembered the kids saying when they were small the fellow got up one night to go to the bathroom and got lost in the hallway went back to […]
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A New Etiquette “One stall for all” is a new scenario for Wilbur. Thanks to his wife, he knew in the past the right thing to do but now he doesn’t know what “one stall for all” calls for after he’s through: Is it toilet seat up or toilet seat down? Author Bio: Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has […]
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The following is a collection of poems about Vietnam veterans and how their lives were forever changed by the horrific effects of the herbicidal warfare compound known as Agent Orange. A Life Without Guard Rails You think you got problems? You probably do but would you trade with Phillip, a Vietnam vet who still thinks Agent Orange lurks in every puddle […]
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Answering Machine My wife’s upset because I won’t answer the phone in the middle of the night even though the phone’s on my side of the bed. And I say that’s because after all these years we both know whenever the phone rings in the middle of the night, someone we know, maybe someone we love, has […]
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A Good Customer I saw Al once a month for 30 years, maybe more, doing business together. He retired to hunt bear in Alaska, hook Tarpon in Florida, golf in Scotland. He had it all planned. Nothing would stop him. Months later I learned doctors said he had cancer of the blood. The outlook was bleak. I called Al and he said six months, […]
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A Sisyphus Moment 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 to eat, somewhere to live, a job they can go to every day. Sometimes the boulder slips and rolls back downhill and Sisyphus jumps aside. Accidents happen. […]
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Salt and Pepper White privilege it’s called and recently I learned its name although I’ve been white as a sheet for decades. Like breathing and eating I take white privilege for granted. I push a cart through a megastore in bib overalls and no one follows me and when I hail a cab in a snow storm, it picks me up. My freckles may be a stop sign. Not so […]
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Willie in his 80s now hadn’t made sense in years. His wife understood his grunts from the recliner where she propped him up till bedtime where snoring was music in the night. His grandson told neighbors Gramps had Old-Timer’s Disease, an excellent diagnosis with which doctors agreed. It was time to move Gramps to a home so his wife began […]
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At Midnight in New York It’s midnight in New York and in this tall building Herb and Molly are in bed making love. Molly is a virgin and it hurts. Olga’s upstairs in bed with cancer terminal and it hurts. Melvin’s downstairs in bed snoring. Nothing hurts because he doesn’t know yet he has multiple sclerosis. In the hallway a thief goes floor […]
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I bring a milkshake every other week to an old man in a nursing home, a refugee from Germany who paid me 50 cents to cut his grass when I was a kid in Chicago after WWII. I couldn’t understand him then and I can’t understand him now but 50 cents was big money in 1950, 10 candy bars, 10 […]
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