He said it doesn’t look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them


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‘He said are you a religious man do you kneel down / in forest groves and let yourself ask for help.’
He said it doesn’t look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
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‘She must have loved gold seeing that everything in the penthouse was gold. We didn’t sit. Fear didn’t let us see where to sit.’ A story by Adachioma Ezeano.
‘I had also, a week earlier, been fired for trying to sleep with my boss’s husband. I got the idea from a book, or maybe every book.’ A story by Emily Adrian.
‘The Mitsubishi conglomerate controls a forty per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna; they are freezing and hoarding huge stocks of the fish every year.’ Katherine Rundell on extinction speculation.
‘Two roof tiles are missing to the rear: the kiss of death. Without repair, ruination is now inevitable. Until then, this is my best hope of shelter.’ Cal Flyn visits the island of Swona in northern Scotland.
‘I’m on the cliff of myself & these aren’t wings, they’re futures. / For as long as I can remember my body was a small town nightmare.’ A poem by Ocean Vuong.
Raymond Carver (1938–1988) was an American poet and short-story writer. His works include Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Cathedral, which was a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
More about the author →‘Vicky says I’m crazy. She said worse things too last night. But who could blame her?’
‘I think I even used the phrase second honeymoon to the realtor, God forgive me, while Susan smoked a cigarette and read tourist brochures out in the car’.
‘But when I look again at this picture that was taken three years ago in London, after a fiction reading, my heart moves, and I'm nearly fooled into thinking that friendship is a permanent thing.’
‘June was summer nights and days, graduations, my wedding anniversary, the birthday of one of my children. June wasn't a month your father died in.’
‘Yell defiance until his chest hurt, at the hawks that circled and circled over the meadow.’
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