On My Brother’s Trail – Short Story Ilan Stavans It’s not possible that you won’t be happy … It’s not possible that you won’t be happier than I. –Isaac Babel, “Karl-Yankl” For years the mid-size, black-and-white photo hung proudly on the staircase at home. Later my mother stored it away. When every one of her […]
Pantoum, with Swan – Poem Maxine Kumin Bits of his down under my fingernails a gob of his spit behind one ear and a nasty welt where the nib of his beak bit down as he came. It was our first date. A gob of his spit behind one ear, his wings still fanning. I […]
Parrot – Poem Gwyn Thomas A bird, a bird that has been Stumbling through pots full of paint So that his colour’s as loud as his voice– Screeching red, squawking blue, A shower of shouting grating green, Besides technicolour swearing and blasting. He’s an exploding palette of a bird, A jabbering coloured window With a […]
Quizzical Carlton Blues – Poem Chris Wallace-Crabbe Quizzical Carlton Blues Somewhere between truth and meaning among those colourless corners in the sky can be found piled up like mad a terrible heap of old descriptions of god, much like inventing a person but the bitter converse, in fact, as though these cold sou’westerly raindrops crept […]
Editor’s Note – Brief Article – Editorial Looking at a map of Australia one imagines modern cities clustered at the edges of a land mass of vast emptiness, the great middle inhabited mainly by marsupials and scattered groups of indigenous peoples. This paradox speaks to the uncertainty at the heart of many selections in this […]
Eating Tomatoes in Heaven – Poem Kristy Nielsen The woman in a coma opens her eyes to the white ceiling of heaven. Will she have firm breasts again? Her body twitches in an underground tipple. She hears her husband whisper, “I haven’t been brave enough to kiss her,” and thinks she’s back at her favorite […]
The difference between rubies and pomegranates – Poem Zohra Saed i. Heaven is at the instep of a mother’s foot sharing the few inches with home. The faint fragrance of blood thick when we are near. ii. When they tilted their heads back, their open mouths tasted water in the blue. At 18, they were […]
Dear Norman Talbot – Poem Kris Hemensley Dear Norman Talbot the idea that my music is swallowed here as a hedge would be on a wheat-plane or a footpath’s width or a ditch in the dam-flooded country i’d still measure in counties disorients me once again it’s clear i’m not the settler i’m supposed to […]
Sorley Maclean – Poem Peter McCarey Sorley Maclean Wolves or wolfhounds, in the emptiness –no more reluctance, nothing but the fleet the fleeting track and melting in the snow that melded wind and drift for half a breath– will sport the cross-hairs of this life and death. Peter McGarey has published extensively in magazines and […]
Kafka’s Diary – Poem Bernard Cohen The glimpse of a woman’s flesh is like a story that has to be told. The pale, blue tinge of wrist, the venous neck which hints at the depth of collarbone, the firm calf seen for an instant as a gust tugs at her dress seam, all these promise […]