• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

was parked in the

drive.

it was a nice moonlit

night.

as Julio started his car and

backed out the drive

Henry waved him a

farewell.

then he went inside

sat

down.

he finished Julio’s untouched

drink

then he

phoned

her.

“he was just by,” Henry told

her, “he’s feeling very

bad…”

“you’ll have to excuse me,”

she said, “but I’m busy right

now.”

she hung

up.

and Henry poured one of his

own

as outside the crickets sang

their own

song.

one for Sherwood Anderson

sometimes I forget about him and his peculiar

innocence, almost idiotic, awkward and mawkish,

he liked walking over bridges and through cornfields.

to night I think about him, the way the lines were,

one felt space between his lines, air

and he told it so the lines remained

carved there

something like van Gogh.

he took his time

looking about

sometimes running to save something

leaving everything to save something,

then at other times giving it all away.

he didn’t understand Hemingway’s neon tattoo,

found Faulkner much too clever.

he was a midwestern hick

he took his time.

he was as far away from Fitzgerald as he was

from Paris.

he told stories and left the meaning open

and sometimes he told meaningless stories

because that was the way it was.

he told the same story again and again

and he never wrote a story that was unreadable.

and nobody ever talks about his life or

his death.

bow wow love

here things are tough but

they’re mostly always tough.

basically I’m just trying to get along

with the female. when you

first meet them their eyes

are all moist with understanding;

laughter abounds

like sand fleas. then, Jesus,

time tinkles on and

things leak. they

start BOOMING out DEMANDS.

and, actually, what they

demand is basically contrary to whatever

you are or could be.

what’s so strange is the sudden

knowledge that they’ve never

read anything you’ve written,

not really read it at

all. or worse, if they have,

they’ve come to SAVE

you! which means mainly

wanting you to act like everybody

else and be just like them

and their friends. meanwhile

they’ve sucked

you up and wound you up

in a million webs, and

being somewhat of a

feeling person you can’t

help but remember their

good side or the side

that at first seemed to be good.

and so you find yourself

alone in your

bedroom grabbing your

gut and saying, o, shit

no, not again.

we should have known.

maybe we wanted cotton

candy luck. maybe we

believed. what trash.

we believed like dogs

believe.

(uncollected)

the day the epileptic spoke

the other day

I’m out at the track

betting Early Bird

(that’s when you bet at the

track before it opens)

I am sitting there having

a coffee and going over

the Form

and this guy slides toward

me—

his body is twisted

his head shakes

his eyes are out of

focus

there is spittle upon his

lips

he manages to get close to

me and asks,

“pardon me, sir, but could you

tell me the number of

Lady of Dawn in the

first race?”

“it’s the 7 horse,”

I tell him.

“thank you, sir,”

he says.

that night

or the next morning

really:

12:04 a.m.

Los Alamitos Quarter Horse

Results on radio

KLAC

the man told me

Lady of Dawn

won the first at

$79.80

that was two weeks

ago

and I’ve been there

every racing day since

and I haven’t seen that

poor epileptic fellow

again.

the gods have ways of

telling you things

when you think you know

a lot

or worse—

when you think

you know

just a

little.

when Hugo Wolf went mad—

Hugo Wolf went mad while eating an onion

and writing his 253rd song; it was rainy

April and the worms came out of the ground

humming Tannhäuser, and he spilled his milk

with his ink, and his blood fell out to the walls

and he howled and he roared and he screamed, and

downstairs

his landlady said, I knew it, that rotten son

of a

bitch has dummied up his brain, he’s jacked-off

his last piece

of music and now I’ll never get the rent, and someday