Drinking While Driving, by Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver

Drinking While Driving

It’s August and I have not

Read a book in six months

except something called The Retreat from Moscow

by Caulaincourt.

Nevertheless, I am happy

riding in a car with my brother

and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.

We do not have any place in mind to go,

we are just driving.

If I closed my eyes for a minute

I would be lost, yet

I could gladly lie down and sleep forever

beside this road.

My brother nudges me.

Any minute now, something will happen.

#AmericanWriters

Liked or faved by...

Other works by Raymond Carver...

The Current

These fish have no eyes these silver fish that come to me… scattering their roe and milt in the pockets of my brain. But there’s one that comes—

Late Fragment

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so… I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel my…

Fear

Fear of seeing a police car pull i… Fear of falling asleep at night. Fear of not falling asleep. Fear of the past rising up. Fear of the present taking flight.

Circulation

By the time I came around to feel… and woke up, moonlight flooded the room. My arm lay paral… propped up like an old anchor unde… your back. You were in a dream,

Shiftless

The people who were better than us… They lived in painted houses with… Drove cars whose year and make wer… The ones worse off were sorry and… Their strange cars sat on blocks i…

Bobber

On the Columbia River near Vanta… Washington, we fished for whitefis… in the winter months; my dad, Swed… Mr. Lindgren-and me. They used b… pencil-length sinkers, red, yellow…

The Cobweb

A few minutes ago, I stepped onto… of the house. From there I could… and everything that’s happened to… It was hot and still. The tide wa… No birds sang. As I leaned agains…

Late Night with Fog and Horses

They were in the living room. Say… goodbyes. Loss ringing in their ea… They’d been through a lot together… they couldn’t go another step. Bes… there was someone else. Tears were…

Photograph of my Father in His Twenty-Second Year

October. Here in this dank, unfa… I study my father’s embarrassed yo… Sheepish grin, he holds in one han… of spiny yellow perch, in the othe… a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.

Your Dog Dies

it gets run over by a van. you find it at the side of the roa… and bury it. you feel bad about it. you feel bad personally,

What the Doctor Said

He said it doesn’t look good he said it looks bad in fact real… he said I counted thirty-two of th… I quit counting them I said I’m glad I wouldn’t want t…

Stupid

It’s what the kids nowadays call w… like clouds from his lips. He hope… comes along tonight, or calls to a… Help is what he’s most short on to… A storm thrashes outside. Heavy s…

Cathedral

This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from ...

This Morning

This morning was something. A lit… lay on the ground. The sun floated… blue sky. The sea was blue, and bl… as far as the eye could see. Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dresse…

My Daughter and Apple Pie

She serves me a piece of it a few… out of the oven. A little steam ri… from the slits on top. Sugar and s… cinnamon - burned into the crust. But she’s wearing these dark glass…

Raymond Carver