“You ought to try to be like Abe Mortenson,” said my mother, “he gets straight A’s. Why can’t you ever get any A’s?” “Henry is dead on his ass,” said my father. “Sometimes I can’t belie...

I got his ashes, she said, and I… out to sea and I scattered his ash… they didn’t even look like ashes and the urn was weighted with

in the earliest possible day in the blue-headed noon I will telegraph you a boney hand decorated with

the essence of the belly like a white balloon sacked is disturbing like the running of feet on the stairs

we take what we can see— the engines driving us mad, lovers finally hating; this fish in the market staring upward into our minds;

he was just a cat cross-eyed, dirty white with pale blue eyes

Bobby’s wife worked two nights a week and when she was gone he got on the telephone. I knew that on Tuesday and Thursday nights he would be lonely. It was Tuesday night when the phone r...

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...

I went up to Tammie’s place with my cardboard cartons. First I got the items she mentioned. Then I found other things—other dresses and blouses, shoes, an iron, a hair dryer, Dancy’s cl...

“Get a seat for her, put her on the tab,” I told Marty. “All right. We’ll set her up. We’re S.R.O. We’ve had to turn away 150 and it’s 30 minutes before you go on.” “I want to introduce...

It was another Sunday that we got into the Model-T in search of my Uncle John. “He has no ambition,” said my father. “I don’t see how he can hold his god-damned head up and look people ...