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Europe some summer soon and she wants you to

buy her a near-new Mercedes and she’s in love with

Mel Gibson and her mother is a

drunk and her father is a racist

and sometimes when she drinks too much she

snores and she’s often cold in bed and

she has a guru, a guy who met Christ

in the desert in 1978, and she wants to

be a dancer and she’s unemployed and she

gets migraine headaches every time she

eats sugar or cheese.

I watch him take her

up

the escalator, his arm

protectively about her

waist, thinking he’s

lucky,

thinking he’s a real special

guy, thinking that

nobody in the world has

what he has.

and he’s right, terribly

terribly right, his arm around

that warm bucket of

intestine,

bladder,

kidneys,

lungs,

salt,

sulphur,

carbon dioxide

and

phlegm.

lotsa

luck.

the shit shits

yes, it’s dark in here.

can’t open the door.

can’t open the jam lid.

can’t find a pair of socks that match.

I was born in Andernach in 1920 and never thought it

would be like this.

at the races today I was standing in the 5-win line.

this big fat guy with body odor

kept jamming his binoculars into my ass and I turned and

said,

“pardon me, sir. could you please stop jamming those goddamned

binocs into my ass?”

he just looked at me with little pig eyes—

rather pink with olive pits for pupils—

and the eyes just kept looking at me until I stepped away and then

got sick, vomited into a

trash can.

I keep getting letters from an uncle in Andernach who must be

95 years old and he keeps asking,

“my boy, why don’t you WRITE?”

what can I write him? unfortunately

there is nothing that I can write.

I pull on my shorts and they rip.

sleep is impossible, I mean good sleep. I just get

small spurts of it, and then back to the job where the foreman

comes by:

“Chinaski, for a pieceworker you crawl like a snail!”

I’m sick and I’m tired and I don’t know where to go or what to do.

well, at lunchtime we all ride down the elevator together

making jokes and laughing

and then we sit in the employees’ cafeteria making jokes and

laughing and eating the recooked food;

first they buy it then they fry it

then they reheat it then they sell it, can’t be a germ left in there

or a vitamin either.

but we joke and laugh

otherwise we would start

screaming.

on Saturday and Sunday when I don’t have money to go to the track

I just lay in bed.

I never get out of bed.

I don’t want to go to a movie;

it is shameful for a full-grown man to go to a movie alone.

and women are less than nothing. they terrify

me.

I wonder what Andernach is like?

I think that if they would let me just stay in bed I could

get well or strong or at least feel better;

but it’s always up and back to the machine,

searching for stockings that match,

shorts that won’t tear,

looking at my face in the mirror, disgusted with

my face.

my uncle, what is he thinking with his crazy

letters?

we are all little forgotten pieces of shit

only we walk and talk

laugh

make jokes

and

the shit shits.

some day I will tell that foreman off.

I will tell everybody off.

and walk down to the end of the road and

make swans out of the blackbirds and

lions out of berry leaves.

(uncollected)

big time loser

I was on the train to Del Mar and I left my seat

to go to the bar car. I had a beer and came

back and sat down.

“pardon me,” said the lady next to me, “but you’re

sitting in my husband’s seat.”

“oh yeah?” I said. I picked up my Racing Form

and began studying it. the first race looked tough. then a man was standing there. “hey, buddy,

you’re in my seat!”

“I already told him,” said the lady, “but he didn’t pay

any attention.”

“This is my seat!” I told the man.

“it’s bad enough he takes my seat,” said the man looking

around, “but now he’s reading my Racing Form!”

I looked up at him, he was puffing his chest out.

“look at you,” I said, “puffing your goddamned

chest out!”

“you’re in my seat, buddy!” he told me.

“look,” I said, “I’ve been in this seat since the