you came out, she said, and then you kicked this guy’s car and then you threw yourself into a… you crushed the whole bush,

call it love stand it up in the failing light put it in a dress pray sing beg cry laugh

There was death in that place on the hill. I knew it the first day I walked out the screen door and into the backyard. A zing– ing binging buzzing whining sound came right at me: 10,000...

the men phone and ask me that. are you really Charles Bukowski the writer? they ask. I’m a sometimes writer, I say, most often I don’t do anything.

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future. I didn’t like what I saw down there. Those men and women had no special daring or brilliance. They wanted what everybod...

Phillipe ’s is an old time cafe off Alameda street just a little north and east of the main post office. Phillipe’s opens at 5 a.m.

I didn’t have any friends at school, didn’t want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me. During lunch one day I was a...

Christmas eve, alone, in a motel room down the coast near the Pacific— hear it?

Somehow the money slipped away after that and soon I left the track and sat around in my apartment waiting for the 90 days’ leave to run out. My nerves were raw from the drinking and th...

re-reading some of Fante’s The Wine of Youth in bed this mid-afternoon my big cat

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…