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
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
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 →‘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.’
‘Vicky says I’m crazy. She said worse things too last night. But who could blame her?’
‘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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