Lydia liked parties. And Harry was a party-giver. So we were on our way to Harry Ascot’s. Harry was the editor of Retort, a little magazine. His wife wore long see-through dresses, show...

Abe Mortenson was had enough to be around but he was just a fool. You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn’t deceive anybody. It’s the deceivers who make y...

The next time you listen to Borod… remember he was just a chemist who wrote music to relax; his house was jammed with peor e: students, artists, drunkards, bur…

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…

I met an old drunk on the street one afternoon. I used to know him from the days with Betty when we made the rounds of the bars. He told me that he was now a postal clerk and that there...

I was casing next to G.G. early one morning. That’s what they called him: G.G. His actual name was George Greene. But for years he was simply called G.G. and after a while he looked lik...

Later in the hospital they were dabbing at my knees with pieces of cotton that had been soaked in something. It burned. My elbows burned too. The doctor was bending over me with a nurse...

I had been sleeping on a terrible mattress with the springs sticking into me for several years. That afternoon when I awakened I pulled the mattress off the bed, dragged it outside, and...

There was another German Shepherd. It was hot summer and he came BOUNDING out of a back yard and then LEAPED through the air. His teeth snapped, just missing my jugular vein. “OH JESUS!...

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...

the German hotel was very strange… double doors to the rooms, very th… looked the park and the vasser ter… it was usually too late for breakf… would be everywhere changing sheet…

places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you… that?

love, he said, gas kiss me off kiss my lips kiss my hair my fingers

“your poems about the girls will s… 50 years from now when the girls a… my editor phones me. dear editor: the girls appear to be gone