Category: Past issues

1 | 2   Holding hands   Walking behind them in the narrow passageway I see their hands join while their heads stay high and I think: equal energies, equal affinities.   Down their sleeves (his jacket, her blouse) run currents the early evening stars detect and whose meaning is…

1 | 2   Not home   Right now is not Home. It’s more a classic Kiwi camping ground. With the salty lick of a Tip-Top summer And the butterfly anticipation Of what may eventuate In the flimsy tent Lashed by wind and grit. Macrocarpas and magpies Nod their disapproval…

1 | 2   Felix falls   What’s it like? To look down and out into space for God’s sake. To bum-shuffle out to the edge then plummet, plummet at warp speed. A death-helix descent. Steady breathing fragile membrane of normal between you and fiery disintegration. While the woman that…

1 | 2   Poetry Masterclass at the Embassy Theatre   The woman who arrived late and sat beside me did not have a copy of the poems but accepted an offer to share mine. And so it began.   She referred to the presiding poet as Bill and, before…

1 | 2   As if I should care   I met your old girlfriend from years ago today, at an awards ceremony.   I was a little dressed up, she was a little dressed down   in jeans and sneakers but still wearing the wide smile I remembered.  …

1 | 2   The spirit wrestling gallery   In the spirit wrestling gallery there are no doors or windows, only wind, rustling and wrestling with itself.   A bird has escaped inside. It flies on the back of the wind. It drops and circles but it doesn’t land. There is…

1 | 2   Horizon   In 600 BC, the Greek philosopher Thales knew that you could chart an ocean course by laying your fingers one above the next to measure the space from the far horizon to one constant star. That mix of commonplace and mystical – a small stack…

1 | 2   Excerpt from The Lie That Settles ARRIVAL 2   There was a black wind-up phone in the ticket office. The operator chattered away as she connected me to the prison number. I got the impression she had not had a call to deal with all night. There was…

1 | 2   Excerpt from The Lie That Settles PROLOGUE   1947: Near Maidstone, Kent, England    The seasons in the countryside could be measured by the hop vines as they crept up the wires. It was autumn now, and the vines were full. The air outside the cone-shaped oast houses…

1 | 2   Sigourney Weaver Knows Me in Another Life Where I Am a Drummer   You should see my thighs. In this life I am always doing a double kick. Heel down. Heel down.  I’ve been lifting weights and the definition in my forearms is off the charts. I used to be…