I mean, I just slept I awoke with a fly on my elbow and I named the fly Benny then I killed him and then I got up and looked in th…

to be writing poetry at the age of… like a schoolboy, surely, I must be crazy; racetracks and booze and arguments with the landlord;

The phone rang the next morning. Lydia had gone back to her place. It was Bobby, the kid who lived in the next block and worked in the porno bookstore. “Mindy’s down here. She wants you...

The next day in bed I got tired of waiting for the airplanes and I found a large yellow notebook that had been meant for high school work. It was empty. I found a pen. I went to bed wit...

I kept the date in mind. It was never any problem creating a split with Lydia. I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the st...

Three or four days later I found her note and phoned Debra. She said, “Come on over.” She gave me the directions to Playa del Rey and I drove over. She had a small rented house with a f...

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

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

he came to the door one night wet… terrorized white cross-eyed tailless cat took him in and fed him and he sta… grew to trust me until a friend dr…

Lydia phoned me in the morning. “Whenever you get drunk,” she said, “I’m going out dancing. I went to the Red Umbrella last night and I asked men to dance with me. A woman has a right t...

Lydia and I were always fighting. She was a flirt and it irritated me. When we ate out I was sure she was eyeballing some man across the room. When my male friends came by to visit and ...

That night I gave another bad reading. I didn’t care. They didn’t care. If John Cage could get one thousand dollars for eating an apple, I’d accept $500 plus air fare for being a lemon....

she had huge thighs and a very good laugh she laughed at everything and the curtains were yellow and I finished