On teaching at the Iowa Writer’s Conference: “The entire time [John Cheever and I] were there . . . I don't think either of us ever took the covers off our typewriters. We made trips to a liquor store twice a week in my car.”

After a lot of talking—what his wife, Inez, called assessment—Lloyd moved out of the house and into his own place. He had two rooms and a bath on the top floor of a three-story house. Inside the rooms, the roof slanted down sharply. 

In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard. The mattress was stripped and the candy-striped sheets lay beside two pillows on the chiffonier. Except for that

But I kept going. Went
a long way without stopping.
Left the dogs, my friends, behind.

He slept on his hands.
On a rock.
On his feet.

  This rain has stopped, and the moon has come out.
I don’t understand the first thing about radio
waves. But I think they travel better just after

What a rough night! It’s either no dreams at all,
or else a dream that may or may not be
a dream portending loss. 

Driving lickety-split to make the ferry!
Snow Creek and then Dog Creek
fly by in the headlights.

Where this floated up from, or why,
I don’t know. But thinking about this
since just after Robert called

They’re alone at the kitchen table in her friend’s
flat. They’ll be alone for another hour, and then
her friend will be back. Outside, it’s raining—

Now that you’ve gone away for five days,
I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,
where I want. Make biscuits and eat them

In a little patch of ground beside
the wall of the Earth Sciences building,
a man in a canvas hat was on

The nights are very unclear here.
But if the moon is full, we know it.
We feel one thing one minute,

The sad music of roads lined with larches.
The forest in the distance resting under snow.

The Khyber Pass. Alexander the Great.

 

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.