the boys come up the boys climb up the brown pole as the waterheater gurgles in Spanish

at the hospital that I have been going to the nurses seem overweight. they are bulky in their

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 ...

Each night as I got ready to go on in, Joyce had my clothing laid out on the bed. Everything was the most expensive money could buy. I never wore the same pair of pants, the same shirt,...

if I suffer at this typewriter think how I’d feel among the lettuce-pickers of Salinas?

I am driving down Wilton Avenue when this girl of about 15 dressed in tight blue jeans that grip her behind like two hand… steps out in front of my car

the strong men the muscle men there they sit down at the beach cocoa tans

had lost the last race big somebody had stolen my coat could feel the flu coming on and my tires were low. I went in to get a

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

They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know whe...

boy, don’t come around here tellin… can’t cut it, that they’re pitching you low and insid… they are conspiring against you, that all you want is a chance but…

here I’ll be 55 in a week. what will I write about

the legs are gone and the hopes—th… and I haven’t shaved in sixteen da… but the mailman still makes his ro… water still comes out of the fauce… myself with glazed and milky eyes…

for five years I have been looking across the way at the side of a red apartment hou… there must be people in there even love in there