Advice From My Father

By Jeannie Marshall

I saw my father one morning as I crossed Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. There he was–a skinny old man with a little island of hair on the top of his head and a patch of suntanned skin on either side–sitting at a table under the umbrellas of Caffé di Marzio. He was finishing off a cappuccino and smoking a cigarette; his old man's body curved in an arc over the table while he read a newspaper, Corriere della Sera.

Night Moves

by Tim O'Connell

I arrived home from a meeting, late. Ellen and the boys were in our room asleep, so I got into Devin’s empty bed. I should’ve been glad to have a bed to myself. But after ten years of marriage and two children, I’m accustomed to sharing my bed with at least one, and often two or three people. I felt a little lonely lying there alone, until sleep joined me.

Discarded

by Christine White

"We need your discards!" reads the postcard from the Vietnam Veteran's National Headquarters. I imagine it's from my father even though I know it's direct mail. "Please call now," it says, in big bold letters, underlined.

They sell whatever is donated and use the profits to support state and national programs. After the word "programs," in parenthesis, the card clarifies, "homeless Veterans, agent-orange related health problems, improved hospital care for veterans with disabilities." They mean men like my father. Veterans who came home with "adjustment"issues. I grew up without him with stories about him unemployed, drunk and homeless.