‘She acted as if her own desires magnetized the world, and when you were close to her, she magnetized your moral compass too.’
The outbuildings of his father’s farm looked stable enough to me, but then he gunned the engine and I had to grab hard at the rails beneath my seat as the speed pushed us back, and we lurched forwards, then down to the left. A brief glimpse of tarmac rushed past, and I clung on as the bike rocked …
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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.
‘I asked where the path was to the rapids. He looked at me as if all his suspicions had been confirmed.’
‘What I needed was to gaze into the surface, and, by gazing, to pass into another world, and breathe.’
‘We decided then to tell each other exactly how a typical fuck played out in our marriages. We couldn’t believe we’d never done this before.’
Fiction by Miranda July.
‘Diana saw that Lucy’s appeal was in the nostalgia of her looks: Hers was a teen beauty, at home nowhere more than in a miniskirt.’
Fiction by Lillian Fishman.
‘I hope I never have to miss a playdate for catechism.’
An excerpt from Oldladyvoice, translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Whittle.
