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

The funeral was to be at 10:30 a.m. but it was already hot. I had on a cheap black suit, bought and fitted in a rush. It was my first new suit in years. I had located the son. We drove ...

this one always arrives at the wrong time a basically good sort I suppose an honest man

Wagner wasn’t done with us. I was standing in the yard during gym class when he walked up to me. “I’m putting you on garbage detail until further notice.” The kids had to work off their...

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

During the second and third grades I still didn’t get a chance to play baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever got a bat in my hands again I knew I wo...

one of the terrible things is really being in bed night after night with a woman you no longer

“...I’ve seen people in front of their typewriters in such a bind that it would blow their intestine… right out of their assholes if the… were trying to shit.”

Our man was there to meet us, Gary Benson. He also wrote poetry and drove a cab. He was very fat but at least he didn’t look like a poet, he didn’t look North Beach or East Village or l...

cleaned my place the other day first time in ten years and found 100 rejected poems: fastened them all to a clipboard much bad reading.

I took it home, opened the beer, got into bed and began. It started well. It was about how Janko had lived in small rooms and starved while trying to find a job. He had trouble with the...

I was back in L.A. about a week and a half. It was night. The phone rang. It was Cecelia, she was sobbing. “Hank, Bill is dead. You’re the first one I’ve called.” “I’m so glad you came ...