let’s praise old ladies’ beautiful bodies I see them daily in the Y shower room myself included some of us gaunt sinewy some with rolls of fat some in between but most with rounded bellies...

joan read all the time — do you recall when we were parked in front of the post office I don’t remember quite how it began but I have a clear picture of our sister emerging from the p.o. d...

My Gift           This poem was written by my mother,Vera Wardner Dougan, to my father,for their first Christmas together, 1924.If I could give to you one only gift...

you could buy your way out of the civil war pay someone two hundred dollars to take your place the farmer on the road near us (well before my grampa was born) did so his replacement was killed. many y...

swanpoem #1a lone swan patrolled this little stretch of the ohio for five years until he disappeared some say they saw him flying south in the company of two whistling swans so my friends’ small...

catalpaforest story part 1near the wisconsin farm we lived onwe kids at exploratory age followedthe crick discovered upstream a groveof trees planted incongruously in rowsstrange trees catalpa trees w...

phonepoem #1the phone just rang it was newt gingrich without preamble the voice said “this is newt gingrich – as someone who loves america” – at which I hung up I can think of ...

chickenfeedpoem #3and then there’s the rooster in thebackyard hedge between us and the neighbors he ate from the dogdishes at their backdoor and oursgrew into a bold and brassy chapwho dashed ou...