and the sun wields mercy but like a jet torch carried to high, and the jets whip across its sight and rockets leap like toads, and the boys get out the maps

I’ve come by, she says, to tell you that this is it. I’m not kidding, it’s over. this is it. I sit on the couch watching her arrange her long red hair before my bedroom

I went over the other day to pick up my daughter. her mother came out with workman’s overalls on. I gave her the child support money

Then I started coming home unhappy. “What’s the matter, Hank?” I had to get drunk every night. “It’s the manager, Freddy. He has start… “What’s the name of the song?”

drunk and writing poems at 3 a.m. what counts now is one more tight

horses running with her miles away laughing with a fool Bach and the hydrogen bomb

Fay was all right with the pregnancy. F… I went out and checked the car. Came ba… “Oooh, oh,” she said. “No, wait.” Maybe she could save the world. I was p… “We better go now,” I said.

drive to the beach at night in the winter and sit and look at the burned-down amus… wonder why they just let it sit there in the water.

for five years I have been looking across the way at the side of a red apartment house. there must be people in there even love in there

I began receiving letters from a girl in New York City. Her name was Mindy. She had run across a couple of my books, but the best thing about her letters was that she seldom mentioned w...

I go to pick her up. she’s on some errand. she always has errands many things to do. I have nothing to do.

when I look back now at the abuse I took from her I feel shame that I was so innocent,