Pollick Stories

A collection of humor essays about growing up in the small Midwestern city of Stow, Ohio

Most Stowbilly children, especially teenagers, knew that the really good stuff didn't show up on TV until at least 11:30 on a Friday night. That's when Channel 8 in Clev...

Your tattooed stigmata is showing, my dear- that spot of willful blood lies dormant; while greedy hosts of Angels draw illicit lots, and seek redemption in performanc...

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.

Now it is a vineyard, like so many others;/But when you taste its wine, you drink the blood of your brothers.' From Red Hill, a French folk song. I let someone else do t...

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...

The fish could hardly be expected to remember us- Two sleep-dusted Ohio boys, working a pole with Brother Blake, methodically plinking the glass of Heritage Lake.

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...

On the one hand, we have this couple-so young, so connected, so grounded. The balloon they released together into the Memphis air held two cards in tow as it found its w...

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...

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...

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...

Somewhere in the white hot core of the Dancer's spirit lie the remnants of too much vision, lies the residue of a thousand broken treaties: lies the child who bartered w...

Four small whispers can now leave rehearsal, the last cigarette has been ground to ashes. It was once important for us to kill some Negroes, no matter how many times the...

Let us skip, you and I, through certain half-smelted streets; where time and conscience dissolve like watches, and glass shadows catch the first sun's rays fully on thei...

Pilate is doomed to clean his rifle forever- The walls will not forget these nights. If you decided to brave the waters of sanctioned terror, be sure to wear your Christ...

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...

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...