I was the last one off the plane and there was Joanna Dover. “Joanna, let’s have a Bloody Mary while we wait for my baggage. Oh hell, I don’t have any baggage. But let’s have a Bloody M...

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...

half drunk I left her place her warm blankets and I was hungover didn’t even know what town

these women are supposed to come and see me but they never do. there’s the one with the long scar…

The next morning Tammie found a prescription in her purse. “I’ve got to get this filled,” she said. “Look at it.” It was wrinkled and the ink had run. “Well, he tried to get this prescr...

I took the envelope home to my mother and handed it to her and walked into the bedroom. My bedroom. The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even ...

awaken at 11:30 a.m. get into my chinos and a clean gre… open a Miller’s, and nothing in the mailbox but the Berkeley Tribe

They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor. “Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me. “All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know whe...

bet on #6, I try red, I stare at… wonder what Chekhov would do, and… blue plates sit eating the carnage… and look very much like Russians a… my left tit and try to smile like…

the branches break, the birds fall… the whores stand straight, the bombs stack, evening, morning, night, peanutbutter,

sleepy now at 4 a.m. hear the siren of a white ambulance,

and the subnormal. all through grammar school junior high high school junior college

Somehow the money slipped away after that and soon I left the track and sat around in my apartment waiting for the 90 days’ leave to run out. My nerves were raw from the drinking and th...

I am hung by a nail the sun melts my heart I am cousin to the snake