Friendly fire – by Tricia Dearborn
Poetry Tricia Dearborn Poetry Tricia Dearborn

Friendly fire – by Tricia Dearborn

the reassuring foof as it ignites      

flickering blue under a small saucepan

coaxing the milk to warmth for cocoa

puffing up the dumplings, alchemising

sugar and butter and golden syrup

to sumptuous stickiness

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Ghost streets – by Alexandra Sangster
Nonfiction Alexandra Sangster Nonfiction Alexandra Sangster

Ghost streets – by Alexandra Sangster

I have lived here long enough to know where the people who are not living anymore live.

Well not them exactly, but their ghosts.

All of the streets speak.

There is a build-up

of bones

(not the literal kind, not like in Paris with the catacombs or in Scotland with the pits of plague dead under your feet)

but bones none the less.

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Magic – by Maria Takolander and David McCooey
Fiction Maria Takolander & David McCooey Fiction Maria Takolander & David McCooey

Magic – by Maria Takolander and David McCooey

I can do magic. That’s what she told me when we met. We had found ourselves walking side-by-side among a small group of strangers on a tour of the local gardens. She told me her name and then came out with the confession. It hung between us, like a rabbit, pale and trembling, pulled out of an invisible hat. I had no idea what she was talking about. I wondered: why had she hand-picked me? I was becoming paranoid: what was I unknowingly giving away about myself? After that, even the grass seemed vaguely treacherous, but then I’ve never been an outdoors person.

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A thousand gifts – by Maki Morita
Nonfiction Maki Morita Nonfiction Maki Morita

A thousand gifts – by Maki Morita

this story about food starts in a gym, but I’m talking free-to-air TV not protein bars — running on a treadmill to the white noise of Border Security could be the crème de la crème of suburban pastimes — did you know quarantine law makes good primetime drama? — we pant we glance we witness a family unravel souvenirs with which to adorn their kitchen — this is a tune to hum along to and I take another sip of water

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The Budgie - by Jing Cramb
Fiction Jing Cramb Fiction Jing Cramb

The Budgie - by Jing Cramb

My son couldn’t even say the word ‘dog’ back then; he called it a ‘dug’. It was cute but I was not moved by his cuteness nor any puppy’s cuteness – I was in the middle of a divorce. Not to mention that I was bitten on the leg by a stray village dog when I was young. Over the years, the reasons for not getting a dog evolved into three questions: Who is going to walk the dog every day? Who will be responsible for collecting the poo? How much will it cost to own a dog? My son and I both knew it was the answer to the last question that left us dogless, but we never admitted it, as if keeping the same secret from each other and assuming the other person did not know.

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Day 210 – by Brigid Coleridge
Poetry Brigid Coleridge Poetry Brigid Coleridge

Day 210 – by Brigid Coleridge

WINNER OF THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023

‘Russia–Ukraine War Latest: What We Know On Day 210 Of The Invasion’
The Guardian, 21 September 2022

We meet because someone told us to.
You will enjoy each other he says, but
it is the wrong word. When I see you,
you are deep in Cubism – guitars
in shards, your back a pointed stroke.

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Shedload – by Chris Andrews
Poetry Chris Andrews Poetry Chris Andrews

Shedload – by Chris Andrews

RUNNER-UP, GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023

I shove the shed door open. That smell:
turpentine, creosote, ivy, mouse.
Empty silhouettes on the pegboard.
Who kept all these broken promises
of repair? OK, all right, but I
can’t have been the soldering angel
who restored the heirloom crystal set.

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Improbable Acts of Proximity – by Shey Marque
Poetry Shey Marque Poetry Shey Marque

Improbable Acts of Proximity – by Shey Marque

RUNNER-UP, GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023

i

To imagine the dead are running
short of space – I’ll call it unlikely, so much of it
going spare, idle, we’re most hectic at the edges.
I hollo long into the wintering acres, white
particles of grief touching a thing that hits another thing
hurtling towards an edge. You bring spectre only to strangers
because my longing is too great, my pull too strong.
At some point the moon will spiral in so near,
our ocean tides will tear it apart, & it will be sublime,
for a minute.

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Gifts from a harsh continent – by Tehnuka
Nonfiction Tehnuka Nonfiction Tehnuka

Gifts from a harsh continent – by Tehnuka

I wake lying on my back, staring up at a bright Antarctic sky. Although I don’t understand how I got here, I’m not surprised at having been unconscious on the ice. A childhood spent reading tales of Shackleton and Scott has left me believing Antarctica is where scientists and explorers go to die, or at least lose their toes. Despite, or perhaps because of, this conviction, I leapt at the opportunity for fieldwork on a volcano on the edge of Antarctica, in what then seemed the wildest place on Earth. And over the next few weeks, whenever things go wrong – snowmobile accident, frostbitten nose, internet malfunction – we will say to one another, making light of it: ‘Well, what did you expect? It’s a harsh continent.’

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The Interpreter – by Mariam Tokhi
Fiction Mariam Tokhi Fiction Mariam Tokhi

The Interpreter – by Mariam Tokhi

Mir was a patient man. When the receptionist glanced up at the waiting room, she barely noticed him, quietly slumped over his phone. He was used to clinic waiting rooms with their bustle, anxiety and constantly ringing phones; their warning posters of sad, unvaccinated children; the griefs and elations of the people who swung out of the clinic rooms. When Mir was younger, an aspiring doctor himself, he loved watching people, playing a game with his sister Aliza where they guessed the stories of those around them …

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The Hairy Iceberg – by Kylie Moppert
Nonfiction Kylie Moppert Nonfiction Kylie Moppert

The Hairy Iceberg – by Kylie Moppert

Until a year ago, I lived in an apartment above a shop front in a leafy inner suburb. After decades of living in the outer suburbs, I’d flipped a coin and leased an abandoned restaurant with rooms upstairs. There were restaurants on either side, elm trees in the street’s central garden strip, and Victorian terraces boasting ironwork fences. I renovated downstairs into an artisan bakery and immersed myself in unrelenting hours of slow-ferment, wild-yeast sourdough …

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This Time Next Week – by Richard Rebel
Fiction Richard Rebel Fiction Richard Rebel

This Time Next Week – by Richard Rebel

Butch and Sundance are pinned down and bleeding in the shadows, about to go out in a sepia-toned blaze of glory. Redford – he’s got the stoic and determined thing down pat, with the boyish charm still there just below the surface. Newman’s blue eyes shine, even when the rest of his face isn’t smiling.

Dad shifts in his chair. There is a cold cup of tea beside him. He says something about William Goldman and this being one of the first ’70s movies, maybe the first, even though it was ’69. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, story-wise, he says. It’s like they made it up as they went, just a string of scenes … but it’s a fun ride anyway, you know …

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The Cheesewring – by Campbell Andersen
Fiction Campbell Andersen Fiction Campbell Andersen

The Cheesewring – by Campbell Andersen

When it first happened, I blamed her. I wanted to act out some sort of rage – whether it was just throwing a spoon or making a fist-sized hole in one of her canvases, something obviously reactive and stupid, although no less satisfying – but we were crying and distraught and so I held her and said the words she wanted. We made a community Facebook post (pleading for information, offering a small reward) and I drove around at night shouting the dogs’ names out the window …

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Scarface 1–5 – by Kylie Mirmohamadi
Nonfiction Kylie Mirmohamadi Nonfiction Kylie Mirmohamadi

Scarface 1–5 – by Kylie Mirmohamadi

A woman has a scar that will fade, with time.
1. She takes a selfie in the bathroom mirror. The scar down the right side of her face looks fainter, less raised, than in real life.
2. She sends it to some people. They say she looks good, beautiful, strong. They tell her they love her.
3. Her husband says that with a scar she is sexier.
4. His friend’s girlfriend, in Mexico, says there is a dried rattlesnake remedy for healing skin.
5. On a walk she listens to ‘Perfect Skin’, and David Bowie sings to her that everything will be all right, tonight …

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Rat – by Anjelica Rush
Fiction Anjelica Rush Fiction Anjelica Rush

Rat – by Anjelica Rush

He is screaming about his mother, his father, the Jews, the Chinese, the Clintons, that family in Number 8, those builders in Number 9, the shitty fucking internet, our shitty fucking building, this shitty fucking country.

Most of it we disagree with, though when he yells that you can’t trust the government we shrug because there’s no arguing with that …

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The Conversation of Weaving – by RT Wenzel
Nonfiction RT Wenzel Nonfiction RT Wenzel

The Conversation of Weaving – by RT Wenzel

I am not a self-taught weaver, but taught by the baskets themselves. A gifted basket using eel-trap techniques. Two thrifted, age-brittle flax baskets, spliced and braided. The extraordinary collection of moody, low-lit weavings at Okains Bay museum, chance encountered. My eyes and hands recognise the diagonals and crosses, the ribs and the spokes, the warp and weft of organic material, even before I learn a new technique. Someone in my ancestral line knew these shapes, these patterns; my fingers echo the hands of unseen teachers. But my teachers are primarily the plants themselves. Each plant has stories and preferences, and the conversation changes between seasons, storms, lunar phases …

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Nursery – by Nicola Redhouse
Fiction Nicola Redhouse Fiction Nicola Redhouse

Nursery – by Nicola Redhouse

She grows the tomatoes by accident. Something alchemic in the compost. She has a few weeks where she feels almost maternal toward them, as each flower gives way to a tiny green bauble.
A man on the radio says this year a small average temperature drop has reduced a certain quality needed to turn tomatoes red. She cannot remember the details. She is neither a gardener nor a chemist, though she works in a nursery. She listens to this show, a gardening show, because she likes how the host rolls his rrrrs: says rrrhododendrrrhon, starrflowerr. She knows now that starflowers are a north American perennial.
On the news there is a report that people, civil servants in a hotel in Cuba, have been attacked by some sort of wave. Electric waves. Micro waves. (She is not a physicist, either.) These people are now tormented by a high-pitched noise, headaches. It has been months. They may be spies, the papers are saying …

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Sharehouse Archaeology – by Ale Prunotto
Nonfiction Ale Prunotto Nonfiction Ale Prunotto

Sharehouse Archaeology – by Ale Prunotto

At the house inspection, I squeezed past two people in the hall pushing fearfully on plasterboard that acted more like marshmallow than a wall. One whispered to the other: ‘this place is not fit for human habitation …’ True, it is maybe not ideal, what with the gaping hole in the hallway ceiling, and the mould spidering across the bathroom walls, and the broken ratty blinds, and the eternally leaking trapdoor in the kitchen, and that time the toilet got blocked and Linds got covered in filth trying to plunge it, and that time the carpet in the hallway became squelchy and we realised that water was trickling from the roof to the porch and through the 10 centimetre gap under the front door, and we called George, the owner, who in his cowboy style not only injected silicone into the crack in the roof but also drilled a hole in the floorboards so that any persevering water would filter directly into the billion-year-old foundations …

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Home of the Pure Heart, House of the Dying – by Rafael SW
Fiction Rafael SW Fiction Rafael SW

Home of the Pure Heart, House of the Dying – by Rafael SW

You are the gift that keeps on screaming. Your parents don’t want you, and rarely do you see your father, even less so once he dies. They name you Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu because Albanians don’t struggle to pronounce X, like pirate treasure in the middle of your maps. It’s 1910, though your birthday is eclipsed by August 27, when at last they drown you in God.
God is always with you. In sunsets and two-headed black eagles, in little ashtrays shaped like underground bunkers, and in the words they say over your father’s grave …

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