the other day I’m out at the track betting Early Bird that’s when you bet at the track before it opens)

twitching in the sheets— to face the sunlight again, that’s clearly trouble. I like the city better when the

she writes continually like a long nozzle spraying the air,

The drilling and squeezing continued for weeks but there was little result. When one boil vanished another would appear. I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a...

I sat in the airport and waited. You never knew about photos. You could never tell. I was nervous. I felt like vomiting. I lit a cigarette and gagged. Why did I do these things? I didn’...

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

in the Valkerie Mountains among the strutting peacocks I found a flower as large as my head

The bandages were helpful. L.A. County Hospital had finally come up with something. The boils drained. They didn’t vanish but they flattened a bit. Yet some new ones would appear and ri...

with old cars, especially when you… and drive them for many years a love affair is inevitable: you even learn to accept their little

Then I developed a new system at the racetrack. I pulled in $3,000 in a month and a half while only going to the track two or three times a week. I began to dream. I saw a little house ...

I would, of course, prefer to be w… instead of with a photograph of an… to the sound of the anvil chorus a… girls kicking high, showing everyt… but I might as well be dead right…

drive to the beach at night in the winter and sit and look at the burned-dow… wonder why they just let it sit th… in the water.

The next night as they moved the group from the main build– ing to the training building, I stopped to talk to Gus the old newsboy. Gus had once been 3rd-ranked welterweight contender b...

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...

I heard it first while screwing a… who had the biggest box in Scranton. I listened to it again as I wrote… to my mother