Category: 2017

Jane Blaikie   A Sunday, he’s sixteen, works four hours, no pay, a trial in the New World butchery. Impresses a grid on mince, bins dated steak. Gets a Warehouse job instead, zero hours but paid to train.   The demos are watching Adirondack zombies hunt New York vampires while…

Mary-Jane Duffy   Are you completely dead or is part of you still alive – like your inflatable brain or your softening lungs? Or your spleen so splendid in its isolation? Or is it your digestive system digesting what is truth and what is faecal? Or your knees so achy…

Marlon Moala-Knox   [to the tune of ‘Ievan Polkka’] Up the stream from the Skinner’s port, where the winter’s long and the summer’s short, Paolo slept and kept his clothes in a hollowed-out Subaru. Vincent had a shack with windproof walls in a spot next to the firebug stalls. Paolo,…

Maggie Rainey-Smith   My sister and I know there’s a chance that one of us is wrong. There’s no one left in the family to arbitrate. Over decades, our memories have been carefully nurtured, coloured by strong emotions, refined with retelling – to ourselves and others. We don’t clash so…

Laura Peckyno   ‘Jesus, Phil! That’s fucking disgusting,’ I said. Small clouds of sugar dust rose from the corners of Phil’s mouth. His foot rolled one of several empty water bottles protruding from beneath the passenger seat. ‘Sugar. Breakfast of champions,’ he said as he popped the lid back on…

Judith Lofley   Reading and writing and re-writing and formatting in government-speak from the timeless void of waffle and wonder turns brains to Weetbix. The worst part is reading the foreword beside the photo of the half-witted grinning Minister who signs in a scrawl of thought or rather, the uploaded…

Erin Donohue   When I look in the mirror I see myself. Sometimes when I’m anxious and unmedicated the psychosis comes back. But mostly when I look in the mirror I see myself. My therapist asks me, again and again, ‘What do you see? What’s there?’ I tell her it’s…

Alison Glenny   Some days he seemed to fade almost to nothing. The photographs showed a stranger, or a silvery absence that highlighted the small marks of mould and discolouration. The mole above his eyebrow, for instance. Had it always been there, or was it a later addition? Sometimes a…

Alison Glenny   Some afternoons a fog rolled down the hallway. On others, the staircase groaned with moisture. A finger laid carelessly on a bannister dislodged a ledge of rime. She lifted the hem of her dress to avoid the damp in the passageway; wore gloves in the kitchen. She…

Alison Glenny   He called it the little observatory. The instrument, he explained, was used for measuring the electrical state of the atmosphere. Its wooden box, with the latch that was too small to be opened by a mittened hand. Later, the photographer disappeared into a bag with only his…