Stories tagged drugs

She's a Mystery Girl

377377 views00 comments00 favs

I looked into those eyes. Those blue eyes. Those blue eyes that weren’t my brown eyes.

Last Chance at Normal

134134 views44 comments22 favs

The guard at County Jail is bemused and bewildered by my presence. It is not often he sees an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant white woman dressed in exuberant Sunday Best coming to collect an inmate.

Slam

2828 views00 comments11 fav

“I said that’s enough!” shouts Pancho, then returns to the counter where he starts dumping the piles of clothes into the plastic laundry basket. The children, wide-eyed, watch quietly from their perches.

Breathing

13811381 views33 comments11 fav

It was the end of a New York City summer, the heat and humidity thick all around. But in her body it was an unforgiving winter, the memory of pain always leaving her cold

Cancer

556556 views22 comments11 fav

This isn’t the first time he’s mentioned his cancer. Three times, he’s had it. Survived them all. He’s grateful, he says. So grateful.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, 2

13161316 views11 comment11 fav

I ran into Geary Marston in front of the French Hotel Café, across the street from Chez Panisse. I was sitting outside at a small round metal table. A girl that looked like a Degas model was selling flowers on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Her shor

Box

705705 views33 comments11 fav

The box was large enough to hold a refrigerator. Or a child's coffin.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, Chapter 4

9797 views00 comments00 favs

I put on my one suit to impress the landlord. I made up a story that I was a trust-funder and Allison was my newly-wed wife and we had just arrived in California to start a relaxed life of luxury and yachting. We didn’t need to work because of this stea

How The Sixties Ended: or, The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 2

44 views00 comments00 favs

While we were drinking that warm beer from Golden, Colorado, a girlfriend of Allison’s strode into the house, saying, “Okay, Janov, tomorrow’s your trial. So, what are we going to do about it?” Everybody called this girl Creamcheese. “Your tr

Harley Davidson Fanny Pack

16151615 views33 comments00 favs

Harley Davidson fanny pack

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 2

7373 views00 comments00 favs

The next day was my faculty trial, and things grew real intense around the campus of that little college. A large crowd of students began to gather around the base of the building that housed the administrative offices, where my hearing was being held. Th

Small Change

490490 views00 comments00 favs

From the passenger seat, Steve shakes the small jar of quarters. They jingle against one another, plunk against the jar’s thick glass walls and its lid. His lips tighten in concern.

Life, in a slowly roasted nutshell

11281128 views33 comments00 favs

You wake up. Slowly but surely. Okay, you're in the bookshop. Yes, apparently this is where you slept, on the floor, with absolutely no sense of irony, in the romantic fiction section...

I Faint at Needles

122122 views1010 comments22 favs

I bring the telephone into the kitchen and stand over the paraphernalia as if to transmit the calamitous image down the line.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 3

7272 views00 comments00 favs

We woke up at a rest stop on a knoll overlooking the Platte River, somewhere in Nebraska. Allison and I were under a blanket on our mattress when Greg and Steve peered in the door. “Psst! Janov, you awake yet? The sun’s been up for like a whole hou