‘Can you hear that noise again? A ‘clunk, clunk, clunk’, coming from the clapped outtreadmill you found on Gumtree. ‘Free, pick up only.’ That should have been warning enough, but you said it just needed a couple of new bearings and it’d be right as rain.’
Continue reading “Body Image by Cheryl Rogers”The City Was Growing Inside Her by Harriet McInerney
She felt it first when she moved into the apartment. On the top floor, the neighbours were friendly and the view spanned many rooftops. On tiptoes she could just glimpse the ocean.
Continue reading “The City Was Growing Inside Her by Harriet McInerney”Museum by Evelyn Araluen
I discovered a Kunstkabinett on the third floor filled with the boxed and framed dead. You were the one who told me what that word meant, a cabinet of curiosities, a wonder room of natural and unnatural history. Inside I met a loris with a toothache who helped me unpin the butterflies from their display.
Continue reading “Museum by Evelyn Araluen”I Saw a Man Die by Cameron Semmens
I saw a man die. Road rage. One punch. The old man toppled like a matchstick. His skull hit the road, his legs didn’t move. From where I sat, eating pizza, I didn’t see his head hit the ground, but I heard it. It was a slap … of sorts. You’d think it would be a crunch, or a crack, but it wasn’t. I cried out something in that moment, but I don’t remember what.
Continue reading “I Saw a Man Die by Cameron Semmens”The Apple Tree by Linda Cook
At the side of the shed, where the sun hardly ever reaches, a thick bed of moss stretches out towards the apple tree like a blanket, inviting Rosie to touch. Bare, curling toes help her spring up, the bark is smooth from a thousand earlier climbs, and the branches are solid and swaying.
Continue reading “The Apple Tree by Linda Cook”Traces by Tess Pearson
I once found one of your toenail clippings, years later, down the side of the couch. It was definitely yours. There was no mistaking it. The moment collapsed in on itself, a union of repulsion and yearning.
Continue reading “Traces by Tess Pearson”Forest by Emily Clements
From nascent darkness the moon hangs knife-like, razor point glistening with intent. Walk through air thick and cold as reptile blood, shadows pooling from the stab wounds of your one-two footfall. The night around you is a pack of wolves eating up the horizon, lupine devils devouring day’s remnants of peach-coloured sunlight.
Continue reading “Forest by Emily Clements”Drought by Hillary Hewitt
Blossom frilled like a childhood dress, a few bulbs that grow wild by the broken drainpipe – these have survived.
Continue reading “Drought by Hillary Hewitt”Chuck Close by Stephanie King
The subject of his portraits was the portrait itself. She tried to take in the black sans serif from the white white as he shadowed her through the exhibition, pretending to read, inhaling, pressing his heat, too close.
Continue reading “Chuck Close by Stephanie King”Pilgrim’s Dream by Seabird Brooks
I awoke from a dream about a friend I hadn’t seen in years to the sound of somebody calling my name. I had no idea where I was at first, and then the word ‘Nina’ was said again and I realised I was in a hostel in Peru, in a city whose name I couldn’t pronounce, and that somewhere across from me in the dark was an Italian guy I’d spoken to for less than five minutes in the hallway.
Continue reading “Pilgrim’s Dream by Seabird Brooks”