When I awakened it was 1:30 pm. I took a bath, got dressed, checked the mail. A letter from a young man in Glendale. "Dear Mr. Chinaski: I am a young writer and I think that I am a good...

at exactly 12:00 midnight 1973-74 Los Angeles it began to rain on the palm leaves outside my window

That night I gave another bad reading. I didn’t care. They didn’t care. If John Cage could get one thousand dollars for eating an apple, I’d accept $500 plus air fare for being a lemon....

half-past nowhere alone in the crumbling tower of myself stumbling in this the

these boys have got class they ought to make kings out of old men rolling cigarettes in rooms small enough

That evening the phone rang. It was Mercedes. I had met her after giving a poetry reading at Venice Beach. She was about 28, fair body, pretty good legs, a blonde about 5~feet-5, a blue...

I saw Bobby out front the next day when I went to buy a newspaper. “Louie phoned,” he said, “he told me what happened to him.” “He ran outside to vomit and Tammie grabbed his cock while...

sitting with the professors we talk about Allen Tate and John Crow Ransom the rugs are clean and the coffeetables shine

I used to know a dutchman in a Ph… he’d take 3 raw eggs in his beer, 71, still working, strong,

she’s from Texas and weighs 103 pounds and stands before the mirror combing oceans of reddish hair

I’m in bed. it’s morning and I hear: where are your socks? please get dressed!

I was sitting in my shorts one afternoon a week later. There was a tender little knock on the door. “Just a moment,” I said. I put on a robe and opened the door. “We’re two girls from G...

boy, don’t come around here tellin… can’t cut it, that they’re pitching you low and insid… they are conspiring against you, that all you want is a chance but…