Joyce found a job with the county, the county Police Department, of all things. I was living with a cop! But at least it was during the day, which gave me a little rest from those fondl...

They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know whe...

it is like this when you slip down, done like a wound-up victrola (you remember those?) and you go downtown

It was hot that night at the reading, which was to be held at St. Mark’s Church. Tammie and I sat in what was used as the dressing room. Tammie found a full-length mirror leaning agains...

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…

is the slim tall ear-ringed bedroom damsel dressed in a long gown

It was 12 hours a night, plus supervisors, plus clerks, plus the fact that you could hardly breathe in that pack of flesh, plus stale baked food in the “non-profit” cafeteria. Plus the ...

one of Lorca’s best lines is, “agony, always agony ...” think of this when you

believe in earning one’s own way but I also believe in the unexpect… gift and it is a wondrous thing when a woman who has read your wor…

let me speak as a friend although the centuries hang between us and neither you nor I can see the moon. be careful less the onion blind th…

30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses and o… and look here, they write, you are a dupe for the state, the… you are in the ego-dream, read your history, study the monet…

lonely as a dry and used orchard spread over the earth for use and surrender. shot down like an ex—pug selling dailies on the corner.

I was sitting with an anarchist from Beverly Hills, Ben Solvnag, who was writing my biography when I heard her footsteps on the court walk. I knew the sound—they were always fast and fr...

it’s unfortunate, and simply not the style, but I don’t care: girls remind me of hair in the sink, girls remind me of intestines and bladders and excretory movements; it’s unfortunate a...