My mother went to her low-paying job each morning and my father, who didn’t have a job, left each morning too. Although most of the neighbors were unemployed he didn’t want them to thin...

you know what Li Po said when ask… Artist or Rich? I’d rather be Rich,” he replied,… sitting on the doorsteps of the Rich.”

I sat in the airport and waited. You never knew about photos. You could never tell. I was nervous. I felt like vomiting. I lit a cigarette and gagged. Why did I do these things? I didn’...

The boys on Dorsey station didn’t know my problems. I’d enter through the back way each night, hide my sweater in a tray and walk in to get my timecard: We had a game going, the black-w...

I met an old drunk on the street one afternoon. I used to know him from the days with Betty when we made the rounds of the bars. He told me that he was now a postal clerk and that there...

half drunk I left her place her warm blankets and I was hungover didn’t even know what town

I had been sleeping on a terrible mattress with the springs sticking into me for several years. That afternoon when I awakened I pulled the mattress off the bed, dragged it outside, and...

they’d come around and they’d ask “you finished your 2nd novel yet?” “no.”

Christmas eve, alone, in a motel room down the coast near the Pacific— hear it?

watch them push the crippled and t… in their wheelchairs on to the electric lift which carries them up into the lon… where each chair is locked down

I get too many phone calls. they seek the creature out. they shouldn’t.

think of de vils in hell and stare at a beautiful vase of flowers as the woman in my bedroom

sometimes after you get your ass kicked real good by the forces you often wish you were a crane standing on one leg in blue water

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out,...