the schoolyard was a horror show:… freaks the beatings up against the wire f… our schoolmates watching glad that they were not the victim…

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

the vultures at the zoo (all three of them) sit very quietly in their caged tree and below

terror finally becomes almost bearable but never quite terror creeps like a cat crawls like a cat

in the earliest possible day in the blue-headed noon I will telegraph you a boney hand decorated with

The funeral was to be at 10:30 a.m. but it was already hot. I had on a cheap black suit, bought and fitted in a rush. It was my first new suit in years. I had located the son. We drove ...

I saw her when I was in the left… going east on Sunset. she was sitting with her legs crossed reading a paperback.

I walked into the counselor’s office. It was Eddie Beaver sitting behind the desk. The clerks called him “Skinny Beaver.” He had a pointed head, pointed nose, pointed chin. He was all p...

Then the supervisor moved us to a new aisle. We had been there ten hours. “Before you begin,” the soup said, "I want to tell you some– thing. Each tray of this type of mail must be stuc...

big sloppy wounded dog hit by a car and walking toward the curbing making enormous sounds

“Be quiet. Don’t wake Dancy. She’s my daughter. She’s 6 years I had a 6-pack of beer. Tammie put it in the refrigerator and came out with two bottles. “My daughter mustn’t see anything....

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

they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it all is.