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Outer Banks – by Kathleen Williams
Nonfiction Kathleen Williams Nonfiction Kathleen Williams

Outer Banks – by Kathleen Williams

Six houses collapsed into the ocean on the Outer Banks, a series of islands off North Carolina, between May and November 2024. In this area of the world, strips of houses that were once on solid ground find themselves on sand due to coastal erosion. I discover these houses through TikTok. Their immense, shuddering structures collapsing into the ocean are captivating, seductive. I wonder if it’s somehow appealing on a class level, if we’re all hiding smirks while watching the upstairs gentry implode from the downstairs quarters.

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The humming – by Meisha Simpson
Fiction Meisha Simpson Fiction Meisha Simpson

The humming – by Meisha Simpson

In the sea, a wolfish grin. The oily head of a seal, whiskers dripping and twitching. The wave, curling the seal with it, one body in motion. Flex, release, and slide with the wave like a seed from a pod. Rolling water, shattering, splintering.

On the shore, a boy and a girl. The boy is on his knees, digging a hole. The girl is brushing sand from her wet purple tights. There’s a dark shape to the left of them, a lump of brown, scaly with sand, a golden strand of seaweed like a wreath on its head.

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The colour of perception – by Tony Barrett
Fiction Tony Barrett Fiction Tony Barrett

The colour of perception – by Tony Barrett

Robbie was a volunteer driver. His first pick-up was in Warrane, a largely public housing suburb on Hobart’s eastern shore. Reno, a cancer patient, was in his mid-seventies, though the disease made him look older. He had far more reason than Robbie to think his day had begun badly, but he didn’t. He’d been a concreter for over fifty years, so he knew about structural weakness and had recognised it in himself long before the specialist delivered his dismal sentence.

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Fish inside a birdcage – by Samuel O'Neil Hamad
Fiction Samuel O'Neil-Hamad Fiction Samuel O'Neil-Hamad

Fish inside a birdcage – by Samuel O'Neil Hamad

‘Winkle-dink, there’s been another one.’

Winkle-dink is an unsightly albatross in his forties with a crooked foot and a mucked-up eye. He’s been off the field for ten years, but he’s still the best detective the Bureau of Investigative Research and Detection (BIRD) has. Mr. Hamburger would trust Winkle-dink with his life and then some.

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The sobber – by Oliver Johns
Fiction Oliver Johns Fiction Oliver Johns

The sobber – by Oliver Johns

Crying is a skill, and I do it exceptionally well. So well, it’s scary. I can’t exactly remember when I first shed a tear. There’s a collection of abstract images: a dropped Cornetto, an overly aggressive peacock, gravelly skinned kneecaps. But they fade in and out. All these memories have melded into a crystallised mound of bad days, something I would need to hack at with a pickaxe – or therapy – but who needs that?

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Gravity – by Morgan Kelly
Fiction Morgan Kelly Fiction Morgan Kelly

Gravity – by Morgan Kelly

He finished his fourth Coke and slumped onto an elbow and a palm. There was nothing new to look at on Countenance – he’d checked. Six times. In the last half hour. Anyone he might have complained to was in bed, go figure. The guys who had dragged him out here had long ago vanished into different corners of the bar. He called them his ‘mates’ in the same sense you might say ‘thanks, mate’ to a stranger. They were the people he saw most often, certainly, but they weren’t his friends.

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Once inside – by Maddie Goss
Fiction Maddie Goss Fiction Maddie Goss

Once inside – by Maddie Goss

He sits in front of a fire, almost life, in a house, a patchwork of frayed could-haves and has-beens. The anger that was once inside is now outside, and the man that was once out there is now in here.

So is the dog, waiting inside to go out.

Once, when the man was boy, he ran and played, small hands tugged, pulled, patted fur and ears with fingers always salty. Now, man smells like something that is not life, pours it down his throat and throws it into the fire. No little hands, no salty fingers.

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Parasites make red pearls – by Lucy Haughton
Fiction Lucy Haughton Fiction Lucy Haughton

Parasites make red pearls – by Lucy Haughton

It was their sixth year at school and the first person in their class, Strillia, had started to Bleed. Conversations erupted in every corner as the children debated when and where they were going to Bleed. Luna took it upon herself to bring her mother’s nail polish in and paint Strillia’s nails all the shades of blood. Crimson red, magenta, deep brown, and baby pink proudly covered Strillia’s fingers for the entire week.

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Flotsam on the drift – by Lonnie Dalton
Fiction Lonnie Dalton Fiction Lonnie Dalton

Flotsam on the drift – by Lonnie Dalton

Upon the frothing current rode splintered ships, barnacled barrels, and one wayward soul.

Crengston lounged on his makeshift raft, whistling out of tune. To be on the drift was a marvellous thing – to be truly detached, basking in nothingness. These waters were strange, but peaceful. The brown, fragrant sea gave the sensation of spiralling down, down towards some unseen centre.

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New purpose – by Alex Bennetts
Fiction Alex Bennetts Fiction Alex Bennetts

New purpose – by Alex Bennetts

She tried her hand at pottery, indoor rock climbing, bonsai. Her palms showed the work of these dalliances, but they always, in tangential ways, recalled the honeymoon. The smashed vase on the bathroom tiles. The unnaturally-biceped man inviting the newlyweds to his room; her husband’s fury. The fronds of the trees that she stood under, waiting for a bus that never arrived. Stems of island ferns cracking in the storm.

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with flowers – by Alexander Bennetts
Poetry Alex Bennetts Poetry Alex Bennetts

with flowers – by Alexander Bennetts

If you hide behind a mixed bouquet you can get out of a tram fine. You can get out of small talk when you’re hoarding grief like a bundle of paper straws. With flowers, your headshot could be a botanist’s pin-up.

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Grass, willow, skin – by Ben Walter
Nonfiction Ben Walter Nonfiction Ben Walter

Grass, willow, skin – by Ben Walter

The wind is blowing off the dead of the river and every gust is hollowing out my body. Even though it's summer and the evenings are spending all the light they've been saving up through the year, it's freezing cold – I am eleven years old and there is nothing to me, my arms and legs are an arrangement of twigs, and the creeping ice is threatening to snap my body into pieces. The sense of arctic nakedness, of shivering in the outfield of a skewed oval, is all pervasive…

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The water’s edge – by Craig White
Nonfiction Craig White Nonfiction Craig White

The water’s edge – by Craig White

Last summer, at Cooee Beach in Tasmania’s north-west, a father drowned while swimming with his children. At Johnson Rock near Currie on King Island, a 43-year-old male tourist drowned while diving with friends when he ‘encountered difficulties in the water’. At White Beach on the Tasman Peninsula, a 36-year-old man drowned while diving for scallops with his mates despite ‘extensive CPR by first responders’.

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The only fish – by Ben Walter
Nonfiction Ben Walter Nonfiction Ben Walter

The only fish – by Ben Walter

The first fish I catch as a child is a flathead. I’m leaning over the side of the boat with my red toy fishing rod, mind drifting wherever a tiny mind does, when I notice a fish at the end of the white string line. Confused, I turn to my dad. ‘Is that … the bait?’ I ask, before seeing that it is a real, actual flathead, and I have somehow caught it.

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The miracle – by Nadia Mahjouri
Fiction Nadia Mahjouri Fiction Nadia Mahjouri

The miracle – by Nadia Mahjouri

Lori believed in miracles. But not the sort them God-botherers bang on about – Dad told her they were all just a bunch of hippa–critts, all fancy hats and hell fire. And anyways, Lori didn’t want their sort of miracles - the type you had to beg for, and wait for, and hope for, and deserve. No, the miracles Lori believed in were the ones she saw every day: the pink soft blossom that swelled and swelled until it was a red ripe apple, the insides of the egg that turned from breakfast to a fluffy chick simply by waiting warm under its mother’s wings.

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Snakes in the valleys, in their hair – by Ben Walter
Nonfiction Ben Walter Nonfiction Ben Walter

Snakes in the valleys, in their hair – by Ben Walter

Once, I was walking on a ridge and lightning was sparkling peaks to the east and the west, while a white spear of cloud hurtled straight for us. We found the top of the mountain, felt its texture through our boots, stared at the views, then turned and ran through an explosion of rain that was dark in the fury of its clouds, that swapped the sweat from our faces with its own jealous wet. Going was the only thing to do, but it still felt a terrible idea, because we’d have to leave the top of the mountain. There were still views. We could still see.

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