EDITORIAL
#31 Editorial
When we called out for contributions to this issue, I’d wondered whether our theme would sound, as a friend put it, ‘a bit desp.’ The term ‘subscribe’ has taken on a manic edge in the attention economy, and in an arts landscape where income from other sources, like funding or meaningfully secure work, is scarce.
POETRY
On whether I subscribe to my name
s gifts me wings: I’m an egret / wheeling above the wet reflective estuary, / altricial, exhilarant as estrogen, / and high on the boldness of yes.
βabel
You pushed your finger through the peel: / flesh soft and wet as the inside of a cheek. / The immigrant’s fruit, half
/ and half again.
Celluloid Dreams
like a lost passenger drifts towards an empty seat in a train carriage here we fall in love in a train carriage or at a cousin’s wedding because it’s meant to be because we are the exception
A Good Life in the Pluriverse
Without your skull’s grip over my brain and under my skin… / Pluriversal coexistence… / Fuck ya gender, just be a cunt!
Link Rot
Travel through a windshield knowing / that ever since jackpot notifications creepered the digital sun- / dial, many are saying this: Take me there: Giddy up: / Giddy up or else.
FICTION
Beach
A sadness attacked him when he saw the gyre of fish, the salmon that were meant to leap from waterfalls and oceanic currents across the Atlantic and back to the freshwater creek of their birthplace, only they were devolving in the same churning circle, like a never-ending dance.
The Afterparty
My watch is gone, maybe I left it on Craig’s table, maybe I don’t even own a watch. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Just wandering in and out of these empty, orange rooms and smiling at all these smooth faces that don’t smile back.
Froggies
I never questioned his obsession with my frogs because I wanted his friendship. In the shower, I practised holding my breath so one day I could trap many frogs in my mouth and splat them onto him all at once, just like he wanted.
NON-FICTION
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Substack
There goes an arm, a leg, I’m flashing my spleen now, you hard yet? How much of myself am I meant to show you? How much of myself am I meant to liquify, inject into my work?
ART & COMICS
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
