‘It was a victory to arrive home. Ma Beeda always celebrated with a strong cup of tea.’
Beeda stood on the school veranda and watched the last pupils disappear down the road. He thought of this as the road swallowing pupils. The day’s climax, a question-and-answer session, came back to him and he heard his voice rise to fill the classroom:
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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.
‘Who needs a bed? he said one night. He was drinking beer out of an old dirty pickle jar.’
New fiction by Edward Herring.
‘That smile the President has – it was just the same then as it is now.’
Fiction by Rebecca Sollom.
Elaine L. Wang remembers friendship, flag-raising ceremonies and class elections at elementary school in Beijing.
‘It is what happens in a place where revenge is the only justice.’
