EDITORIAL
#32 Editorial
Well, here it is—the final issue in our ten month celebration of ten years publishing The Suburban Review. This is the birthday issue, the milestone, and the feather in the cap of all the staff, writers, board directors, and supporters who have been involved since 2013. And most of all, this is a thank you—for the opportunity to learn from and lead this powerhouse of generous publishing, and for the chance to learn what Tenacity might mean in such an industry. Like the figures in Rebecca Stewart’s wonderful cover, we know that it involves a whole lot of work, and…
POETRY
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
i open the door / to a raw steak / on the porch; / red on white, / shocking as murder / or glimpses of your / mother’s men- / struation. the birds
/ have left it to rot / privately
Connie you could call me by any other name
This is real time / transcription. /
You are in the silent / field, you / descend upon / the entrapment which is / feudal thinking.
Notes from Greenland
Every day I took up a little more space, and my body became a / landmass, de-platformed old ideas of personhood.
Red Mitsubishi Lancer
I didn’t know it then but think I have always been moving toward /
that moment in the car park. / Before we met, I was always trying to find a friendship like this, always hustling / to prove I was worthy of it.
the present
she looks up and out and she ties up the string she ties up the string with the flower. she presses her hand against the glass she takes out a string and a look.
woolies mudcake
something something symbol of Australiana / something something beloved childhood cake / yadda yadda gentrified red-brick wall / in a neighbourhood that less and less people can afford
FICTION
Eggy and I
I stretch my legs, rest my tired head in his lap. The Velcro of his favourite old shorts—the ones with countless pockets for stashing fruit and tools—is prickly on my face. I’m turned away from him, looking at the blank telly screen. ‘Nick died today.’
Kennel
With every few inches of ground gained, he lifts slightly to display his stomach to the two women. His pupils flare, almost eclipsing his amber irises. The neighbour takes in a sharp breath and gently tugs on the woman’s hand. ‘Sonia, look. He doesn’t have any balls.’
Anti-Theft Door
Now, even if she wasn’t retired, it would cost more than a month’s salary. ‘It’s so bourgeois,’ her younger brother, then a leftist anti-Shah activist, now a dentist living in Germany, had said. He had said it lightheartedly, but it had still hurt her feelings.
Zombie Crone
These four job applications are a waste of time, acts of a true zombie feeding a burgeoning bureaucracy of senseless shit. After weeks and weeks of energy-gobbling, hamster-on-a-wheel stress, finally, the penny has dropped. I’ve just got to pretend to be looking for a job.
NON-FICTION
A Glossary of Grief
I refuse to hold this much grief and grow around it. To normalise this. Though the loss will be interminable, let it wrap around the whole of us, shroud us in its haunting so that we forever remain tender enough to bear witness.
ART & COMICS
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
