writer | editor | artist
The English verb relinquish comes from the Latin relinquere meaning to leave behind, forsake, abandon, or give up. I first encountered this verb as a young girl, at Sunday School, where I learned the story of the two women who bought their custodial dispute before the wise king, Solomon. The women lived together and had both recently given…
Now, don’t go supposing I’m messed in the head, like the others. I may be blind, but I’m not stupid. I know there are plenty of us who are a bit cracked, but not I. Not I. They first made themselves known when I was four, or maybe five. Candlewicking, my mother called it. The way they’d…
Have you been listening to Galactic Chat? A while ago I was interviewed by Alex Pierce for this wonderful program. I can’t bear to listen, but you should go ahead. I’ve really enjoyed listening to recent Galactic Chat interviews with Angela Slatter, Rosaleen Love and Alan Baxter. Go, listen. And explore the archives, too. It’s an embarrassment…
There are children singing in the courtyard. The same clapping game my sister and I once played. Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine The monkey chewed tobacco on the street-car line … If I could, I would rise from my chair and go to the window, look down and see them. The tops of their shining…
ear Winter, come you further in, fingering the wormholes of Hermione’s heart? Sixteen times she and I have wintered in this hall, warmed each other’s beds. She has risen over me, ridden high as a conqueror on the waves of my flesh And I, divided, have fallen eagerly beneath each victory cry. Autolycus, that finest…
for Darryl Chalk Fracastoro blamed the gown. Veronese, it was, and furred. Centuries later Mead, the gentle physic, wrote that furrs, feather, silk, hair, wool, cotton, flax* could imprison and release contagion. But back then, the men were fools, and nothing so precious as my fur could be burned. One after another they donned the gown and…
Carrion415 was old, but she was well-respected. She had been the first to carry dizygotic twins for two different sets of parents. Just thirteen she had been, and as narrow-hipped as a garter-snake, but she had carried them to term. A boy for his family in Berlin; a girl for her family in Melbourne. Five years later:…
The advertisement called for a tall man, to work in a ‘small close nit cafe’. She imagined this lice-ridden giant reaching up to the high shelves in the café, and wondered who had put things up so high in the first place. Perhaps it was one of the curiously mixed gender staff – those polymorphously-perverse…
What are you doing this summer? I’ll be getting in some time on the beach: sun baking, swimming and surfing. I’ll also be facilitating an awesome 10-day short story workshop through the McGregor Summer School. Lots of workshopping of your stories! Writing races! Chocolate! Bunnies! Ok, so maybe not so much with the bunnies. But still –…
It was my sister who came, down from the mountain, when the rest of them refused. I hadn’t seen her in ten or eleven years, but she was largely unchanged. ‘Come home,’ she said, kissing my cheek. ‘I can’t,’ I said, kissing hers in return. My groom was sleeping by the fire. His long hind…