Category: Past issues

1 | 2 | 3   pony 15   is lowered in a crate from the Terra Nova like a square of hare soup   footage shows her be  wil  der ed with whiskey and lost in ice roots   for God’s sake look after our ponies means their little…

Refuge After listening to Mazen Maarouf   I see you outside the Arc de Triomphe   watching a bubble blown into the crisp, winter air.   You want to reach out feel the silky sheen   run over your hand but you cannot.   Caught in the haze of happiness…

The man who liked to dance   In his wedding photograph, Grandfather’s black hair is slicked back with oil. He holds white gloves. He looks like a man who might like to dance. On their honeymoon in the city, Grandfather took Grandmother to a tea dance. Grandmother told him she…

Yesterday’s news   I hadn’t heard of Michael Jackson until he died. That’s when Mum bought his music and we started learning the moves, which is also when Mum broke her ankle. She downloaded on Saturday, the day after Michael Jackson died. He died on an American Thursday. Mum and…

Excerpt from Follow me   The day began with a clear blue, reaching from the foothills behind the house all the way to the high country of the south. A hint of winter in the snow-capped peaks. The sheep were already spread out across the sloping front paddocks, their noses…

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Hearing Voices   Lindsay and I went to see Gil Scott-Heron at the Brixton Academy in 1996. Gil looked like a wiry old pensioner, but in fact he must have been 47. Responding to a cry from the audience, he leant forward and cackled into the microphone ‘People are always…

1 | 2 | 3   THIS LOVELY HAND OF YOURS   The fine warmth and pulse of it – beauty gets a sounding in the oldest skin, it takes the flutterings of veins and chimes them through. The mind slows and alters – as in the grove of midnight you place a…

1 | 2   Intensive stocking   She walks along a road across a dry plain, turns off on the farm track leading to her cousin’s place. Battered races and pens crowd about in yards. A small sign carved with the family name belies their wealth. Her cousin walks toward her, driving calves: if…

1 | 2   Northern suburbs   I’m leaving the house in Tawa with two others – a kind, sharp-witted woman and a lively man, shut down for now. We’re going to the New World. I pack and repack; cash lies about, also my son’s hoody – he’s already at the place where…