Category: Past issues

1 | 2   Vias Plage   As evening comes lie on your back in the soft sand and watch the frilly-lipped clouds swallow stars.   Startle up as sea steals swift bites of the sandcastles left by children who have gone home to grow up.       Contents |…

1 | 2   Harvest   The fields are cut. The golden stubble a spiky ‘number two’. Swollen grain spilled from harvest rolls and glows in the gutter. Hay baled, old gold stacked against the barren season. Machines bloom, giant flowers in the field. Workers smear sun-blistered skin, drink pastis in…

KM to Ken Russell & Glenda Jackson   Dear Mr Ken Russell, I see like me you have died Please regard this as a posthumous acknowledgement of your gorgeous film   Miss Jackson as ‘Gudrun’ plays my good self And Mr Oliver Reed (‘Gerald’) is Dear John Middleton Murry  …

I get paid well for this job   I get paid well for this job of looking after art objects   that don’t breathe, don’t complain, don’t have wet eyes, or the fear of eternity   that don’t need to be consoled, and don’t need to be told an answer…

On a good day   On a good day The voices of men are a church Maybe on a bad day too Confessions slide past lips Absolved once airborne Every ear a silent priest   On a good day The souls of men are a church A calm and empty…

1 | 2   Forest   Night shrunk to a scrape of fender; pinholed to a dog bark; chuff of wet-nosed animal, scuff of fence post itch of forelock.       Contents | Previous Author | Next Author | About this Author

1 | 2   Egress   A shuffle of reflective jackets: the body wound lifted from the car’s egress.   An orange cone perimeter sets its pall on the afternoon.   Someone will be preparing dinner – thinking through ingredients   looking forward or maybe not particularly thinking.    …

Excerpt from Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings   Mere is Ngāti Mutunga and Iraia is Moriori, the son of a slave woman who was brought to the mainland by Mere’s uncle. They have left Mere’s Queen Charlotte Sound home so that they can be together, travelling to Wellington by Ferry.…

The Roller Blind Goes Duhr-ack-ack-ack   The cupboards in the kitchen have In and Out Handles with the knobby button in the middle that I have to push in before I grab their outsides and pull. Some of them are on Bad Cupboards that I am not allowed into and…

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