Issue Eight

Jas Rose

Jas Rose has completed her Bachelor in Film and Digital Media and is currently working on her Master of Writing with Swinburne University....

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Peter Boyle

Peter Boyle is a Sydney-based poet and translator of poetry. He has had eight books of poetry published and seven books as a translator. In...

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Lou Greene

Lou Greene has spent most of her life trotting the globe: Fiji-born, Lou has also lived in Kiribati, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sulawesi, Germany,...

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Marilyn Humbert

Marilyn Humbert lives in the Northern suburbs of Sydney NSW surrounded by bush.  Marilyn is leader of Bottlebrush Tanka Group, and member...

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The House of Death

By Mori Shige. Translated by Marissa Skeels.   Mori Shige (1880-1938) was a university-educated, headstrong feminist writer from...

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The Ink Stain

by Christina King. Winner of the HNSA 2019 Short Story Contest Just fuzz. Like the fur of a sewer rat. She ran her hand over her head...

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Dirty Laundry

by Julie Parry   The kitchen door was slightly ajar. I bobbed gingerly from side to side, squinting into the sliver of light. I was no...

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History

by Jasmeka Rose.   December 1942 Germany. The whir whir whir of fast machinery fills the air. The fresh, sweet scent of newly cut...

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Gulliver’s Wife by Lauren Chater

Reviewed by Dr Wendy J. Dunn.   “… She went to bed and dreamed she was lying in a garden.  It was night time, the moon a glowing...

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Fare thee well.

by Lou Greene. Commended story in the 2019 HNSA short story contest. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, my mother used to say. I...

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Middle C

By Lauren O’Connell   ’By god! It’s bees!’ The spyglass slipped from my fingers and rolled along the deck, its rumble in...

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PALIMPSEST

By Anna Forsyth   Someone slides open a drawer carefully her gloved hands steady from practice. Hector’s locked box was at the...

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MONKEY BUSINESS

By Devika Brendon   Like a marmoset With those gripping fingers Surprising strength Stretched out full length Ears like a headset How...

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What Sleep Is This?

By Jill Jones   What remains of us at night The weight of respiration the insects we swallow the division of thought into chemical...

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The Magician

By Hélène Cardona.   Good night, the mellifluous whisper catches me like a vine, wraps itself around my will. I stare at violet eyes,...

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Flash

By Les Wicks   I saw my UFO, 1969. Gurus, revolution. Racial & sexual equality stop the damned wars while we played with that...

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We the Dark Ones


by Shona Blake I am a dark one And flow with the dark river The place of my beginning I came fast The river was in a hurry that day But my...

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Ian C. Smith

Ian C Smith writes in the Gippsland Lakes region of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania. His work has appeared in Antipodes,...

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Cat Revelation

By Drucilla Wall   I know a thing or two about cats, and that scrawny black skeleton with dirty socks, curled in an empty flower pot...

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Owen Bullock

  Owen Bullock has published three collections of poetry, Sometimes the sky isn’t big enough (2010), Semi (2017) and Work & Play...

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The Netherlands

By Liana Joy Christensen   Previously published in Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment...

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Julie Parry

Julie lives in Sydney and is currently studying for her Masters in Writing at Swinburne. She left a corporate career in Human Resources to...

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Eamonn Wall

  Eamonn Wall is the author of Junction City: New and Selected Poems 1990-2015 (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2015), Sailing Lake Mareotis...

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Liana Joy Christensen

  Liana Joy Christensen writes and publishes in several genres. She is the author of Deadly Beautiful – Vanishing Killers of the...

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Railway Town

By Les Wicks   Where I grew up there was respect for the uniform. No one ever killed in them. Armed with timetables the wise station...

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The Vampire Squid

By Debbie Lim   Vampyroteuthis infernalis   Literally, from hell. Belling the vast dark with a cape of rusted tentacles. Dante...

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Book Review: Kate Murdoch’s The Orange Grove

Reviewed by Angela Wauchop “‘That is not true. I care about you, Céline. I care about the fact that my wife prostitutes herself for...

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As If The Large Magellanic Cloud Looks Over Us

By Jill Jones.   Thursday was full moon     more than silvery when clouds parted     life is short    days are long you...

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The Wave That Never Came

by Amanda Pearson   We were told the world was ending. My parents, in their naivety, decided a picnic was the only way to celebrate...

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Animate and full of spirits

By Owen Bullock   As the night, as the Chapel when you thought it housed a ghost. As the hedge where he lurked to scare you. Where the...

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