#Americans #XXCentury #1973 #BurningInWaterDrowningInFlame #ItCatchesMyHeartInItsHands
“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...
you no faces no faces at all laughing at nothing—
I cross the room to the last wall the last window the last pink sun with its arms around the world
Fay was pregnant. But it didn’t change her and it didn’t change the post office either. The same clerks did all the work while the miscellaneous crew stood around and argued about sport...
we’d had any number of joints and… beer and I was on the bed stretche… and she said, “look, I’ve had 3 ab… in a row, real fast, and I’m sick… abortions, I don’t want you to sti…
sleep at Lila’s and in the morning we get the breakfast special at th… then it’s up to her friend Buffy’s… Buffy has boy twins, father in dou… in a $150-a-month apt.
to be writing poetry at the age of… like a schoolboy, surely, I must be crazy; racetracks and booze and arguments with the landlord;
crud, he said, hauling it out of the water, what is it? a Hollow-Back June Whale, I said… no, said a guy standing by us on t…
There are sketches on the walls of… and outside a large green bus swer… insanity sprung from a waving line… says the radio, and Jane Austin,… “I am going to do her portrait on…
listening to Wagner as outside in the dark the wind bl… trees wave and shake lights go off and on the walls creak and the… bed...
feet of cheese coffeepot soul hands that hate poolsticks eyes like paperclips I prefer red wine
So I took the exam, passed it, took the physical, passed it, and there I was—a substitute mail carrier. It began easy. I was sent to West Avon Station and it was just like Christmas exc...
64 days and nights in that place, chemotherapy, antibiotics, blood running into the catheter. leukemia.
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...
big black beard tells me that I don’t feel terror I look at him