Then Joyce wanted to go back to the city. For all the draw– backs, that little town, haircuts or not, beat city life. It was quiet. We had our own house. Joyce fed me well.) Plenty of m...

There was another German Shepherd. It was hot summer and he came BOUNDING out of a back yard and then LEAPED through the air. His teeth snapped, just missing my jugular vein. “OH JESUS!...

Beowulf may have killed Grendel a… Grendel’s mother but he couldn’t kill this one:

I was editing a little magazine at the time, The Laxative Approach. I had two co-editors and we felt that we were printing the best poets of our time. Also some of the other kind. One o...

We got back to 1010. I had my check. I’d left word that we didn’t want to be disturbed. Tammie and I sat drinking. I’d read 5 or 6 love poems about her. “They knew who I was,” she said....

I got a letter in the mail. It was addressed from Hollywood. Dear Chinaski: I’ve just read almost all your books. I work as a typist in a place on Cherokee Ave. I’ve hung your picture i...

I took women either to the boxing matches or to the racetrack. That Thursday night I took Katherine to the boxing matches at the Olympic auditorium. She had never been to a live fight. ...

up in northern California he stood in the pulpit and had been reading for some time he had been reading poems about nature and the goodness

Wednesday night found me at the airport waiting for Iris. I sat around and looked at the women. None of them—except for one or two—looked as good as Iris. There was something wrong with...

this man sometimes forgets who he is. sometimes he thinks he’s the Pope. other times he thinks he’s a

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…

I had boils the size of tomatoes all over me they stuck a drill into me down at the county hospital, and

she bent over the side of the bed and opened the portfolio along the side of the wall. we were drinking. she said, “you promised me these

I blacked out after that. I guess I had consumed more whiskey than I thought. I don’t remember arriving at Nicole’s. I awakened in the morning with my back to somebody in a strange bed....