“Which one is Mother? How you know das her name? Long time ago get all kine rules: who can go graveyard, who no can. Depend on how old you stay….

Propped up against the headboard She calmly smoothes the cotton sheet With knarled arthritic fingers, Examining the faded flower pattern. In lucid moments she tells me that I look so…

Penning “2018” on my water bill payment, I realize it’s been fifty years, a full half-century. If not now, when? That novel of social and personal revolution, summer 1968. Better…

I approach the medical receptionist’s desk with my 84-year-old mother. We are at her primary care doctor’s office, on the third floor of the medical group’s building. She’s scheduled for…

Everybody like fo walk around Chinatown on New Year’s Day, no mo nothing fo do, no mo money. Dey like go stand outside da window, watch da cook chop char…

Winter Winter comes when a woman goes cold on you when the butterfly leaves your hand and when the hummingbird no longer stands still and when nothing rests on a…

Once a month, get air raid drill. When you hear da siren, you gotta hide under your desk and put your head on da ground j’like praying at da temple….

Mom kept many gallons of water under the staircase. I watched her eyedropper eight careful drops of bleach into each bottle, wondering how the water would taste. She said if…

Dawn breaks as I near the trail’s end, My dogs, driven by impatience, eager for their treats, Drop their heads and slow. Up ahead, an old woman stands like an…

Or is that plural: The walls have ears? Or both? Or neither? (How could a wall have ears?) Listen, I’ll tell you how. A recent Star-Advertiser story said our President…