‘With a disease as unpredictable as cancer, the opportunity to blame an actual person is an unexpected temptation.’
I spent the day of August 21, 1992, driving to a mountainous desert town whose name, in the scorching heat and fine dust, was a seductive mockery: Palm Springs, California. It was the most Californian of endeavours, an editorial retreat for the Los Angeles-based magazine where I worked. I ate dinner…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘Where do crimes begin and end, and who, decades later, can be held responsible?’
We knew Trump’s range: government by gesture; obfuscation and lying; self-praise; stoking fear and issuing threats.
‘Once I came home at the end of August, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Indeed, nothing had.‘
‘Rub my scalp and tell me who I could have been. / Feed me a morsel or two.’
Two poems by Momtaza Mehri.
‘One did not have high hopes for Gettysburg. Nor for Pennsylvania in general. Having grown up in Indiana, Diana felt she’d earned her condescension.’
Fiction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
‘We talked about Alison’s blood. We asked her what she thought this mystery could be. Really what we wanted was to be told that everything was OK. There was a look on Alison's face when she asked. I cannot describe it, but it was not a face seeking medical “facts”.’
