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Meisha Simpson 28/8/25 Meisha Simpson 28/8/25

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.

Dani Netherclift 28/8/25 Dani Netherclift 28/8/25

Extinctions – by Dani Netherclift

The threat AI poses to writers and the art of writing seems to have arisen swiftly. Who threw open those doors? What is an entry? A door is an aperture to possibility. These are important concerns for a lyric essayist. There are so many ways in (and out), so many connecting silences in between. What does it mean for your calling to become extinct?

Aboubakr Daqiq 22/8/25 Aboubakr Daqiq 22/8/25

Cold coffee – by Aboubakr Daqiq

I haven’t always liked coffee. Loved the smell, just not the taste. In recent years, however, I’ve found myself more than impartial towards an occasional morning coffee – especially when paired with a delicious pastry. My poison of choice is the mocha. Often perjured by claims of inauthenticity and childlike nodes, the mocha has long been a victim of slander and ridicule. Putting aside the politics of coffee elitism, I’ve found that brewing a good mocha is no easy feat.

Johanna Bell 22/8/25 Johanna Bell 22/8/25

If Anne Carson had grown up on a cattle station in the Northern Territory – by Johanna Bell

Smell
I will never forget.
Out behind the killing sheds.
Dry grass maybe a paddock or a holding yard no longer in use.
December, hot. Bull dust in our hair. We had gone to help his grandmother

Tony Barrett 6/8/25 Tony Barrett 6/8/25

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.

Samuel O'Neil-Hamad 6/8/25 Samuel O'Neil-Hamad 6/8/25

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.

Oliver Johns 6/8/25 Oliver Johns 6/8/25

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?

Morgan Kelly 6/8/25 Morgan Kelly 6/8/25

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.

Maddie Goss 6/8/25 Maddie Goss 6/8/25

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.

Lucy Haughton 6/8/25 Lucy Haughton 6/8/25

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.

Lonnie Dalton 6/8/25 Lonnie Dalton 6/8/25

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.

Angus Macdonald 17/7/25 Angus Macdonald 17/7/25

Why Benjamin Stork broke the ribbit glass – by Angus Macdonald

Benjamin Stork sent his final email of the day with Kindest Regards, switched his computer to Standby mode, gave the account executive in the adjoining cubicle a small, apologetic nod, passed Zeke the janitor in the kitchenette, smiled, received a radiant beam of teeth in return, stopped, talked to Zeke about the lobby’s malfunctioning automatic door, looked dumbly at his smart watch, learned from Zeke that a special infrared-sensor part was being shipped in from Portugal, finally took his leave, used his ID card to swipe out and expressionlessly looked at the reflection of his reflection in the lift’s mirror…

Stephen Orr 17/7/25 Stephen Orr 17/7/25

The more you are going home – by Stephen Orr

Sleeping under the piano, close to the rosewood, night sounds amplified by eighty-eight strings. So quiet I can’t really tell, but they’re just outside the window. The scraping of a leaf on a concrete path, until the breeze stops. The movement of a lizard in litter; the way wind works on canopies. Each singing, vibrating, resonating, and when I step outside, the once-a-minute bark of a dog filling the void, this sound moving across the land, through yards, down to the river. All suggesting something else is going on.

Claire Aman 14/7/25 Claire Aman 14/7/25

Ishbel – by Claire Aman

There was a body in the park one afternoon, back when we were kids. Martin and I sprinted home to tell Dad, our schoolbags bumping against our backs. I could hear my blood pounding in my eardrums like footsteps. Dad walked back with us, but there was nothing. Martin and I took turns to lie down in the man’s cold imprint on the grass.

Siobhan Hodge 8/7/25 Siobhan Hodge 8/7/25

Anglerfish – by Siobhan Hodge

She is coming to haunt us –

an ascending angel, serrated black pillow slip,

her beacon dim as her starblind eyes

She belongs to another world, a night away, swimming closer

for one last gasp.

Alex Bennetts 7/7/25 Alex Bennetts 7/7/25

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.

Keith Goh Johnson 25/6/25 Keith Goh Johnson 25/6/25

Improving the area – by Keith Goh Johnson

Nerys sent another jewelled fruit cake this year with an invitation to spend the holidays with her in Ullapool. Kind of her to remember me and who knows? One day I might go. They’re tearing down all the tenements in Caledonia Road to build high-rise flats. If they continue with all the other streets there might not be anywhere else to go. Improving the area. One can but laugh.

Lesh Karan 25/6/25 Lesh Karan 25/6/25

Inaugural visit: snapshots – by Lesh Karan

Fifty years and four generations to arrive.
The smell of coffee mingled with diesel
disorients. A train rumbles in the distance.
The morning is 11 degrees and a chorus
of barks. Countless strays wander these streets.