The efficiency room days werethe worst and the best.Broke and bent,sick and deranged.Disheveled dreams, likehorses with broken legs.There was an occasionalmiracle.A forgotten five-dollarbill crumpled in thefront pocket of some dirtyjeans, lying by the fakeplant and a copy of Hamsun'sHunger,...

I was free for a minute -- not all of me but enough that I could finally breathe   i took it all in, too -- swallowed all of it at once, fearful of the inevitable loss, and held it warm against my old manbones as long as I could, my soul dancing like a feather in the wind