The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact, similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system was an accepted fact. There wasn’t a s...

after the slaughter house there was a bar around the corner and I sat in there and watched the sun go down through the window,

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...

in grievous deity my cat walks around he walks around and around with electric tail and

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 ...

eating cold plums in bed she told me about the German who owned everything on the block except the custom drapery shop and he tried to buy

the elephants are caked with mud a… and the rhinos don’t move the zebras are stupid dead stems and the lions don’t roar the lions don’t care

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.

he was easy, fat as a hummingbird and I had him blowing, I jabbed and crossed and took my t… everybody was waiting for the main… drinking beer, and I was thinking

A day or so later I got a poem in the mail from Lydia. It was a long poem and it began: Come out, old troll, Come out of your dark hole, old troll, Come out into the sunlight with us an...

I heard it first while screwing a… who had the biggest box in Scranton. I listened to it again as I wrote… to my mother

I went upstairs to 409, had a stiff scotch and water, took some money out of the top drawer, went down the steps, got in my car and drove to the racetrack. I got there in time for the f...