We make stops on the way to our bog plot to look at the little skeletons. Dad tells me about them. Curlews and skylarks in dancing poses. Tiny skulls.
Bog Iron by Shane Larkin
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Issue #30
The Storyteller of Aleppo by Donna Obeid
In the barren cold camp, you wear a dusty cape and top hat, wave my cane as if it were a wand and tell me your dream-stories, one after the next, your words spun and tossed like tethers into the air.
Magic Fingers by Elizabeth Fletcher
By the fourth motel, I knew to hold my breath for the exhale of mildew when mom unlocked the door. In the shadows of the blackout curtains, we spied the coin box between the two doubles.
Itinerary by Richard Holinger
Bears would come eat haybales stacked to the ceiling, one on top of the other. Barn had no doors.
Stranger in the Bright Light by Jennifer Lai
I heard about the abductions from Lisa. First, it was a Doberman. Next, a Ball Python. Then, just yesterday, someone’s Maine Coon. Why they were out in Gladstone Field in the first place is anyone’s guess.
Men Like Them (Marks Park, Sydney, 1988) by Kathleen Latham
It’s the local man’s idea to walk to the Bondi Beach bluffs. More privacy, he says with a twitching smirk of nerves
Yayoi Kusama’s Yellow Pumpkin Swept Away By Typhoon Lupit by Melissa Llanes Brownlee
your obsession fills me in with dots, not dipping dots, the pastel ice cream of the future, but black circles lining edges and curves, holes like lotus flowers, seeds, fruit…
No Chocolate For You by Lynn Powers
The café hostess hesitates about giving away a prized outdoor seat, but Christine’s raised “don’t-fuck-with-me-right-now” eyebrow gets her a patio table. A harried waiter slaps down a menu. Christine scans it for anything fitting her doctor’s recommendation.
Love Lies Bleeding by JP Relph
I can’t stop staring at her mouth. Lipstick feathering into the strained sympathy lines there. Like the lines on flower petals, to tempt the bee. Her cheap pink words – nothing medically wrong, just keep trying – aren’t exactly sweet, more like slogans on sad tee-shirts.
Fulfilling by Fiona McKay
Kate is not ‘imagining it’. There are small tufts of pale fluff on her neck, and no, it’s not ‘just a tissue in the washing machine’ as John suggests. There’s nothing drifting off his shirts, nothing clinging to Ella’s favourite black top, Josh’s Minecraft t-shirts. It’s more solid than tissue, just on her clothes. And only she can see it.