After nine or ten hours people began getting sleepy and falling into their cases, catching themselves just in time. We were working the zoned mail. If a letter read zone 28 you stuck it...

I’ve always had trouble with money. this one place I worked everybody ate hot dogs and potato chips

live alone in a small room and read the newspapers and sleep alone in the dark dreaming of crowds.

Lydia and I were always fighting. She was a flirt and it irritated me. When we ate out I was sure she was eyeballing some man across the room. When my male friends came by to visit and ...

This is advance notice that it is proposed to remove you from the Postal Service or to take such other disciplinary action as may be determined to be appropriate. The proposed action is...

I had to fly to Illinois to give a reading at the University. I hated readings, but they helped with the rent and maybe they helped sell books. They got me out of east Hollywood, they g...

he used to sell papers in front: Get your winners! Get rich on a d… and about the 3rd or 4th race you’d see him rolling in on his ro… with roller skates underneath.

Of all the guys left in the neighborhood, Frank was the nicest. We got to be friends, we got to going around together, we didn’t need the other guys much. They had more or less kicked F...

what is it about lobsters and crab… those white-pink shells that always make me hungry just looking at them there in the butcher’s display case

sit on this bench and look at the sea and the freaks and the lovers. need new eyes a new mouth new pillows, a new woman.

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

The first thing I remember is being under something. It was a table, I saw a table leg, I saw the legs of the people, and a portion of the tablecloth hanging down. It was dark under the...

the sun slides down through the sh… have a pair of black shoes and a p… brown shoes. can hardly remember the girls of m… there is numb blood pulsing throug…

It was Christmas season and I learned from the drunk up the hill, who did the trick every Christmas, that they would hire damned near anybody, and so I went and the next thing I knew I ...