once starving in Philadelphia I had a small room it was evening going into night and I stood at my window on the 3r…

Bruckner wasn’t bad even though he got down on his knees and proclaimed Wagner the master.

Bobby and Valerie came by and I introduced everybody around. “Valerie and I are going to take a vacation and rent rooms by the seashore in Manhattan Beach,” said Bobby. “Why don’t you g...

yesterday drunken Alice gave me a jar of fig jam and today she whistles

the old folks play a game in the park overlooking the sea shoving markers across cement with wooden sticks. four play, two on each side

So I took the exam, passed it, took the physical, passed it, and there I was—a substitute mail carrier. It began easy. I was sent to West Avon Station and it was just like Christmas exc...

there was a frozen tree that I wan… but the shells came down and in Vegas looking across at a g… at 3:30 in the morning, I died without nails, without a co…

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 didn’t know exactly why but Chuck, Eddie, Gene and Frank let me join them in some of their games. I think it started when another guy showed up and they needed three on a side. I stil...

you with long hair, legs crossed h… the bar, you like a butcher knife… as the nightingale sings elsewhere… mingles with the roach’s hiss. know you as

we are gathered here now to bury her in this poem. she did not marry an unemployed wi… beat her every

New Year’s Eve was another bad night for me to get through. My parents had always delighted in New Year’s Eve, listening to it approach on the radio, city by city, until it arrived in L...