Pollick Stories

I sit beside the Cuyahoga creek and wonder how he done it- Pursued by motivated Native Americans across the burning Midwestern grass, until he found himself caught betwe...

Just clang on the lamp if you need anything, mom. I'll just be lying here, thinking about how small morphine is, And how large life is going to get in six months to a ye...

We should all sweat long enough to meet the man who beat the law of averages. This man is not the sum of his words, but the total of his actions. The books grow col...

Do not whisper near them, sweet children, for war is loud. Men who served with General Anzio Find time for the occasional Bingo And find that corn on the cob can be quit...

Theodicy is a philosophy which examines God's apparent silence during times of human need. I wrote this piece as if God had returned to Earth and no one even noticed. T...

Pol Pot's deflowered now who used to ride a water- smooth buffalo and kill onetwothreefourfive million traitors Justlikethat -- Jeezus, he...

The five older ladies have poured their tea again, And look to each other for recognition. This has been quite a summer, yes it has, And Charles and William and my boy W...

I see in her mottled skin such visions of dishwater pain, The desperately overturned second-hand furniture, stripped bare of our lunch money.

This is where the desperate stitches begin to take hold - In the wary edges of unproven cloth; In the delicate fears of virtuous women, In the fevered robes of noble sol...

Looking north up South Water street, the dying stand solid as parking meters, finding finer spirits underground than the ones they were promised.

The Allegheny is an ancient river by most standards- You'll find plenty of evidence that shells once ruled the Earth; It was on this river that my Dad used his firs...

Spring and breeze and such were oh so powerful then- I fiddled and I fiddled and I fiddled while Rome was still smoking; I danced and I whittled and I climbed and I gigg...

we tried to stay away from anything plum, which looks so garish in the cold fog of authority, as the neighbors report nothing new between those two.

Leaving Iowa behind simply cleared the mind of many a pop idol; Farmers' sons and factories' daughters loved to twist and bellow, flaming out to immoral race records...

I could never understand her need to wash His feet; I did not come from Magdalene's world, That nervous sticky world of anonymous diddling, Which mixes its shekels with...

and when all that remains of our dimestore dances are scuffs on aching linoleum, I shall consider you carefully, and know that we were gods once.

I picked up my first stray when I was five, and it promptly died. He was a fine catch, as strays go - Strong in spirit, eminently playful, relatively grateful; But he so...