‘He’s not himself’, Mum says in the kitchen. Well, who is he then? Is he 40 per cent of his young self? Ten? Do I still have to love him as much as ever, this 90 per cent stranger?
All winter, I’ve been sleeping in the room I slept in as a child and I wake up each day not knowing how old I am. Five? Or twenty-five? He could live to be a hundred – I could be middle-aged, still staring up at this same ceiling.
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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.
‘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.
‘It’s a paper bag filled with pastries. Chicken turnovers.’
An extract from Family Meal by Bryan Washington.
‘I see this everywhere. The creativity, resourcefulness and incredible talent for improvisation in Egypt.’
Wiam El-Tamami on returning to Cairo.
‘His fear was that we would die in front of him and so he thought of us all the time, which is not what he wanted.’
Fiction by Mazen Maarouf.
‘the widening gap / between two kinds of life: the one lived and the one / remembered.’
Two poems by Maya C. Popa.
‘The facts. Fern was skinnier than Liv, but Liv was blonde and tall and her breasts were enormous and thrillingly spaced.’
