Category: Past issues

Brothers-in-arms   You used to buy each other a beer now and again in the RSA. Max’s war was Korea, after yours, but you never talked about war. There were all sorts of things you didn’t talk about, even though you were neighbours. His wife, Norma, went drinking with other…

Ngawhatu On the Richmond bus to Nelson passing Polstead Road you only had to say it, and everyone knew, unspoken we almost dared not look, it stirred such potent thoughts caused laughter, mocking, and a deeply seated superstition innuendo out the window, the road that leads to there To where?…

Yellow Feathers   I’d been teaching in the old Infectious Diseases Hospital – we’d been talking about voice for four hours. I went to the AIDS Memorial Garden to unwind. First I saw the sign: Men Doing Tree Work. Then, from the white gum’s vast spread of branches thick ropes…

Some thoughts about writing ‘Yellow Feathers’   I took my new poem to a poetry group held in a busy pub in Melbourne city. We were crowded around a long table with our glasses of cider or wine or juice. I only knew one person there and she left early…

War Bride, Part Two, Sixty-five Years On   Sarah wasn’t used to the traffic, just as she wasn’t accustomed to the rain and gloom of a wet autumnal English afternoon, which made the headlights of the oncoming traffic even more distracting. But she was determined not to let any of…

My Writing Process   I have been writing for New Zealand Classic Car Magazine as their Bay of Plenty correspondent for a number of years now, which means I am attending annual events for the umpteenth time. For me, a classic car aficionado, this is no hardship. It is a…

1 | 2 | 3 But I would   While you are still ambulant a word now precious and precarious an ambulance of fear sirens through the frame. I ask without wanting to beg but I would for your notebooks the way you talk now. Others circle for your posters collective history…

1 | 2 | 3 At the exhibition   It’s as simple as that, although as must be clear to us all by now that love and simple are unrelated. And don’t we all love Dave anyway. Isn’t that the point of Dave. You love Dave. You claim Dave as…

1 | 2 | 3 Wellington   So on this January morning we’ve been down to swim — Balaena Bay. Children on floats, couples. The sun-drugged lounge on a changing-shed deck. Chat with a friend. Rocky beach, the water green like a weed-eating fish. And there’s Dave and Kathy. Standing by…

Dad   Dad was in the pen, a ewe pinned between his knees. He held its jaw tight with one hand while he drew a knife across its neck with the other. As he cut he pulled the head to the side and back until he heard a pop. A…