But often, thereafter, when Grainier heard the wolves at dusk, he laid his head back and howled for all he was worth, because it did him good. It flushed out something heavy that tended to collect in...
With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.
Through this feeling of helplessness suddenly burst a piercing nostalgia for the lost world of childhood. The way it came right up against the heart, that world, and against the face. No indoors or ou...
She knew: shit, we might as well have been drinking a dog’s tears. Nothing mattered except that we were alive.
News had reached his ears that they planned to distribute mixtures alongside Route One and Route Twenty-two to kill the vegetation there. Depriving ambushers of cover was a good idea, he thought. But...
My father is dead! As soon as he'd said it, Fiskadoro saw he'd made it true again--again for the first time. Did it just go around and around? He began to see that his sorrow wasn't simple. It wasn't...
It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among the rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
Is that why I went wild over her? Because once I saw her truly? Is devotion as simple as that?
If you like the fields we’d walk away from the road into the fields, or we’d go fishing, if that’s what you like to do. The sun would set and we’d build a fire. The trees and rocks would shrink and th...
I pushed through the door into Kelly's. Inside they sat with their fat hands around their beers while the jukebox sang softly to itself. You'd think they'd found out how, by sitting still and holding...
I knew him, this John Smith. Once at a party he tried to sell me a gun, and later at the same party he made everyone quiet down for a few minutes because I was singing along with the radio, and he lik...
I have one ship and they call me a pirate. You have a fleet and they call you an Emperor. I can’t remember who said it.
From a Berkeley Notebook'~Denis JohnsonOne changes so muchfrom moment to momentthat when one hugsoneself against the chillair at the inceptionof spring, at night,knees drawn to chin,he finds himself i...
First I put my lips to her upper lip, then to the bottom of her pout, and then I kissed her fully, my mouth on her open mouth, and we met inside.
Employment in the Small BookstoreTwelve Poems, 1975The dust is almost motionlessin this narrowness, this stillness,yet how unlike a coffinit is, sometimes letting a live one in,sometimes outand the ai...
And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming,...
A bus came. I climbed aboard and sat on the plastic seat while the things of our city turned in the windows like the images in a slot machine.
We stared at him and felt like old maids. He, on the other hand, was the bride of Death.
WE'RE ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF REALITY ITSELF. RIGHT WHERE IT TURNS INTO A DREAM
There were stories that the tunnels went for miles. There were monsters down there, blind reptiles and insects that had never seen the light, there were hospitals and brothels, and horrible things, pi...