You may choose to escape
your life,
cast away your world
to succeed you go
without light, no shadow will be cast
your talent would be
suitably rewarded
a contemplative nature
for
the only person in the world
but a person you love something you recognise one wonderful detail a display of love and affection charm and courtesy and you are happy happy a candle for the night
to warn
something may choose to eat you
you may choose to find a way to escape
but
this is no choice of yours
for nature is a display
of light and shadow
one will succeed
one, cast to the night
no one escapes nature
the wisdom of the world
for life to eat life
to succeed
no peaceful display, but a wonderful one
your talents to find something to eat,
you will be suitably rewarded. be
analytical, budget your good nature, cast out
your affection
but you are one with your nature
you recognised the shadow
cast with the candle
is good, a contemplative light
the wisdom to love that light
to charm the shadow
will turn your attention within
to find a peaceful life
with a good plan, you would make a good life
something with charm, a lawyer?
no, but your talents will be recognised, rewarded
you stay present, no detail escapes your attention
you would make a contemplative person
happy with, happy without
you make your way in the world
in love with the present
but, the present is a courtesy your attention escapes the present, to make plans. Stay present, find a way to choose the present. plans, life is plans, plans plans
no plans in nature no plans but to eat to eat is to be present to eat, is a love
this love, to eat, to succeed, the night we would make, to be present would this be a good life, a world you would love? A night with no shadow..
THE FORTUNES
Fortunes from Hong Sing Foo Fortunes Cookies
Jackson “Jackie Belle” Rushe is an author, poet, and artist from sleepy, little Adelaide. He moved to Sydney and now considers himself a man of the world. He likes to experiment with form and content in different mediums, with lofty goals for his literature and his travels; he often says, Icarus didn’t go hard enough.
The sullen wind at its side tormenting drooping branches –
A plaything for the gale.
He emerges from the water;
Dripping with delight.
She sits upon the hill,
Beside the heavy oak tree.
Although she was waiting on him,
She had hoped he would not come.
Still in a soaking three-piece-suit –
Just as she had left him –
Face down in the lake.
She sees a glimpse of hope;
That he may still be the man she loved.
He floats to her, shuddering in the breeze.
She hums an unsettling lullaby as he approaches,
He listens and watches her with eyes that undress;
She withdraws her dripping shawl.
He sits beside her with newfound hunger.
Droplets slide between two pert breasts;
Twisted lips licked,
As her chest is made bare.
He’s searching for affection,
Overcome with lust,
Reminded of another time;
Where everything was perfectly pure and good,
When he did not need her touch to remind him what it felt like to be alive.
Pining for a love lost like a wreck in the sea.
For all his memories are in vain,
His worship lingers in her mind;
Curious whether she continues to fill the whole in his heart.
She desires to be known by him still,
And would die to be loved by him, still.
The rain returns with a sombre melody,
Hands find one another between blades of grass,
Lips crash together between breathy moans.
Naked and divine –
Tense under his cold touch.
He makes her feel something;
Lost in the fantasy of love possibly rescued.
Transcendentalist; boundless and surpassing.
Touching her heart of craving desire.
He knows what she needs is not what she wants,
Seeing the reflection of another in her eyes,
Yet he is as vulnerable as her – taking comfort in each other.
Marvellous moans of dissatisfaction.
It is as if it happens in an instant,
Feelings made bare as skin exposed;
It is no longer what they want, it is what they need.
She believes in a love she thinks she deserves,
What does she deserve?
If he cannot have her,
No one else should.
Tormented by corrupt sentiment,
Undressed with piercing eyes and wet fingertips.
A devilish thought creeps as hands wander.
She is not pure, and that, he cannot change.
An inevitable downfall transpires;
Troublesome and unsavoury.
Dear distant lover,
Is God always watching?
How does the embrace differ –
From the damp ground to a touch felt distant?
Eyes lock together…
Locked…
Mustn’t one be afraid?
A force so strange she cannot withstand.
Fingers intertwined with amber hair,
Palms gripping the maw.
She set passion free for she has followed him to this spot –
What shall prevail from this?
Leave her as she is, so young and unsought?
Their love was made to last was it not?
A tightening grip.
A fragile feeling;
A shaky last breath.
Infatuated, he stands silent.
Not a word from above.
He picks up her limp body with a toothy grin.
He carries her down to the water from which he rose,
(A ragdoll in his tight grip)
And saunters in so quietly.
Distance was not desired,
Now distance does not exist.
Emiline Barnett is a young, Sydney based poet and writer with a passion for romance and psychological thrillers. She currently studies English and Creative Writing at Macquarie University, indulging in sports and video games in her free time. With a captivation for the morally grey, Emiline aspires to immerse others in the beauty, and the ugliness, within literature.
Its rousing chords mark the first sounds of the day
the morning hour, the national bulletin –
My eyes open onto angles of weatherboard walls,
stooping on their black-soil foundations.
Under a single sheet, I lie listening and still
his soft footfalls on the kitchen’s lino,
the burst of the tap filling the kettle.
A match’s strike doing double-duty
for the stove and his cigarette,
a new packet’s foil usually folded into a silver crane
and set atop the waxed tablecloth.
I rise when the kettle whistles
scampering to fall behind the man
like he did with his father
and his father before him.
The day braces for Summer’s heat,
early morning dew teases.
Galahs, teeming pink and grey, fleck the horizon’s blush
while Painted Honeyeaters play amongst
a tree’s collar of mistletoe vine,
so blessed with colonising tendencies
it’s deemed a ‘noxious weed’.
The yards, an old jumble of logs, split and stacked,
with calves penned overnight to lure the milkers,
hocks soiled with anxiety.
In the shed rafters a tin of Marconi’s Goanna Salve,
the Diggers’ cure-all, to soften cracked skin.
(Those fearsome swaggering lizards
somehow rendered a fragrant paste!)
A cow is tethered and tied,
her calf free to feed –
for not long enough.
His nod signals me to wrangle the pair apart
so his hands can take over from where the calf left off.
An odd moment of connection, each offspring
looking to their parent
for direction, for assurance.
His head settles near her warm flank
the waiting bucket wedged between his legs.
Fingers squeezing and trapping along the teats,
the scene’s score a meter of guided gush and a target’s ting.
All bindings released,
Nature’s pair restored,
the calf soon bunting for more.
Back along the path long pressed into the ground.
His steps.
My steps.
The bucket’s sway leaving creamy foam dashes in between.
These lessons are easier than those in the classroom:
the embodied rather than the inscribed.
Dawn’s banner now pierced
he walks glowing in his own world.
The path’s grass gives way to the house’s garden,
a skirt of lawn drawing from all around
to flush its folds with green.
The backdoor squeak preludes the next hourly bulletin.
Years have passed.
I can only visit that place
in the story of my childhood.
Then, I took all in blind.
Now demands a revision.
Butch was your best stockman,
Harold your hardest worker.
Their tongue lingered in local names – towns and rivers and falls
but Their mob lost
in soundbites – ‘Good for nothin’ ’
in jokes – bull bars and corrugated iron.
In the white man’s law.
My children – I have three—they opened my eyes.
Projects brought home from school:
referendums and Free Riders,
all that went down at my local pool.
I see now, in stark relief against the everyday,
like Light Horsemen drilling on parade,
the logic of elimination – for the land, the land, the land.
Memories from my childhood’s home –
the traditional land of the Kamilaroi but back then,
crops of sun-baked grain an empire’s Golden Triangle,
and time marked by ‘Majestic Fanfare’ across the radio waves.
The landscape’s tussocks
punctuated with Belah, Box and Brigalow.
Those trees, timber shadows cast millennia before
like a star’s travelling light, Their history in our midst.
The shade lines sway with Their songlines –
every leaf an ancient note, an ancient beam.
Above, constellations, strung across the Milky Way
the Kamilaroi’s astral watercourse Warambul.
And the brightest star? Their goanna, the Guugaarr.
To think of it –
that charged landscape,
its thrum makes the great Australian silence deafening.
What I was taught, pestilence in thy ear.
Generation to generation,
we waved to Their new ancestor, Ordeal.
Today my hands sit idle,
I acknowledge, on unceded lands.
But my hands are haunted –
with those of my father
and his father before him.
I am still
m
i
l
k
i
n
g
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“logic of elimination” Wolfe, Patrick. “Nation and miscegenation: Discursive continuity in the post-Mabo era.” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, no. 36, 1994, pp. 93-152.
“great Australian silence” Stanner, W E H. “After the Dreaming.” Boyer Lectures, ABC, Sydney, 1968.
“new ancestor, Ordeal” Whittaker, Alison. ‘Many Girls White Linen.’ Fire Front First Nations Poetry and Power Today, edited by Alison Whittaker, University of Queensland Press, 2020, pp. 57-58.
“Warambul” “Guugaarr” “Kamilaroi and Euahlayi.” AustralianIndigenous Astronomy, www.aboriginalastronomy.com.au/content/community/kamilaroi.
Katherine Hoskin has a multidisciplinary background in Design, Economics and History, having lived, studied and worked in Sydney, Hong Kong and the United States. All this now provides a fascinating font for her Creative Writing studies at MQ. Especially those instances where her family’s history collides with formative national events. This is her first published piece.
tumbling towards the smoldering scrapheap of Hell.
Desire to defend my worth
bleeds out
against His knife-like words
biting,
ripping,
tearing
their way through cells and sinew –
demonstrating such a body will prove
wretched,
monstrous,
abhorrent
to the world around me.
Warnings from His sharpened tongue
strike my eardrums –
reciting recurring traits of
previous, failed experiments like me:
suffocating,
blacking out,
overdosing
on syringes of toxic substances –
awakening to sickening acts
triggered
by their own hand or mouth.
But shall I be led to believe potential
future transgressions
give others the right to
prematurely banish me, or
bury me, forgotten,
beneath the frigid, unforgiving earth?
Hack axes against my foundation?
Throw stones through shattered bones?
Relentlessly, He ignores my
sleepless,
scrawled,
screaming
reformations to my body’s blueprints
to be seen as something far greater:
a safe, separate model of Man
frantically erasing its
primitive form
until no trace remains.
He shakes his head at the
alienated disturbance before Him –
neither resembling Adam’s seed
nor the egg of Eve:
my biblical inaccuracies enough to justify
power-clad policies,
pitiless preaching’s,
piercing pitchforks
propelled my way –
dangerously unaware
how a lazily angled mirror shall reveal
the true face of a monster,
rushing reckless weaponry
straight for His own rotted heart.
Reference: Shelley, M., 1818. Frankenstein.
Jay Best is a member of the
LGBTQIA+ community currently completing a BA in Creative Writing and
Interactive Design. They are an avid fiction and poetry writer who enjoys
reading, gaming, and photography in their free time, with future plans
surrounding publication, cinematography, and video game development.
Mia
Koch is a Canadian-born Australian writer who definitely loves to put words
on paper and doesn’t dread it all. They have been Long-listed for the Future
Leaders Prize in 2022 for poetry.
i’m
upside down and above the ground, can’t you see?
mother
whisked away in pluto’s chariot
he left behind his sceptre and his keys
make
pristine your peace with me
at
her headstone, a ghostly garden buried
her
name marked in black liquor
under sultry moonlight, warm and honeyed
‘‘tis
all a part of the plan’
the
worlds fall apart between my crooked teeth
heartstrings
frayed and violent at the edges
from grapes and sourdough to pomegranate seeds
but
how candescent her spirit was on a starless night!
an
angel harpooned from the heavens
now
all that is left for her daughter is
a passed mother’s perfume
the
vial shattered on my bathroom floor
watch
her final elixir bleed and bleed out
until
all her scent has drifted away
and the dappled tiles stain sickly sweet
i am
still a child / carry me to bed
in
my wallet in my jeans
they
say it’s very beautiful over there
your contrary heart will be safe with me
spiderwebs
your
eyes are hasty and wanting
upon the fiddle leaf fig in our bedroom
obsessed with its nurture and dress
its wiry frame has all but consumed you
‘come
lay for a while’ in your heart
caress me, your comely festoon
i’m splayed out on the kitchen floor
you light a cigarette and sing a drunken tune
you
are the summer shower
your kisses are tender, almost kind
you
are a terrible storm
undying and tainted in my mind
i’ve
been spinning all around you
like spiderwebs before the dawn
legs
tangled between sullied sheets
your hands are too heavy to mourn
my
eyes are cloudy like apple juice
swimming in the pool of your whiskey
yet
you are not dignified nor refined
you were found out in a rusted flask (kiss me)
i
am so adored by you
i’ve never been so in love
my
makeup runs and these apples are bruised
my tears are almost always never sometimes enough
cinnamon
My
dear, I couldn’t help but notice
how
rather out of sorts you’ve been as of late
Tell
me, how is an empty cocoon
so
heavy and hulking amongst the poppies
aching in a sea of wildflowers so gentle they take your breath away
Now
you’re falling asleep in the car,
warm
fingertips on your neck,
soothed
closer and closer to a long goodnight
Cinnamon
sticks melted down into that faraway concoction
seeping softly through your veins
I must
go now, but not before I tell you how
the
vast plains of the universe,
with
all its bloodied moons and anxious stars
couldn’t
stretch far enough to contain
all my affections for you
Nor
the deepest of blackholes
could
swallow the violet sunrise
that awakens in my heart every day you come around
My
dear, we are just stargazing in an earthquake
Watch how the comets fall for you
whilst I pray for the daffodils to spring between our fingertips
CORDUROY
There’s
a bee sitting on me
and a pocket in your corduroy jeans
Oh,
wouldn’t you like to know
just how deep the rabbit hole goes
I
was spiralling, now I’m climbing
A picnic for an old friend
is helping this wilted heart to mend
I’m
exhaling for the first time
in
a long time
This
is my excavation
and Vernon is thy minister
Ouch,
i’m sitting on a bee!
Bees
are shy and sweet
They
cater the clovers evergreen
where the poppies used to sell to me
I’m wearing all corduroy
and it’s all perfect as far as i can see
Jacob Ditchfield is a
Macquarie University student with a passion for creative writing. Growing up on
the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Jacob enjoys playing guitar and reading young
adult and romance fiction. His creative writing major work was long listed for
the Macquarie Future Leaders Writing Prize.
Damini – lit. Lighting, though often used to describe a woman.
Tandav – A vigorous dance performed by the Hindu god Shiva.
Devi – Goddess.
Bhuvans – Realms in Hindu cosmology.
Mahakali – lit. Great Kali, the Divine Mother and Goddess of Time.
Cintamani – A wish-granting jewel in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. It is said that a Cintamani can be found in the ashes of a Buddha.
Tantrika – Someone who practices Tantrism, a taboo practice that preceded Hinduism and Buddhism.
Yantra – A geometric design originating from Tantric practice that holds great significance in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. There are many yantras associated with various deities for particular uses.
Jwalamukhi – lit. Flame-faced Goddess, The Goddess of the Eternal Flame, associated with Goddess Durga and Shaktism.
Mata Rani – lit. Mother Queen, an epithet for the Goddess Durga and her many forms, particularly Goddess Vaishnodevi or Sherawali.
Pralaya – lit. Destruction. A period of apocalyptic dissolution in Hindu cosmology.
Priyasha Janhavi is a Sydney-based poet and writer. An avid traveller, she traverses the world for artefacts of identity to preserve in her verse. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at Macquarie University, and was long-listed for the 2022 Future Leaders Writing Prize.
Jaime Berglin is a queer, neurodivergent poet and aspiring editor, who is fascinated by the impact of time on both process and product of writing. They most enjoy volunteering, seeing live music, sitting by the ocean, and learning about the structures and use of language.
It roars inside and mauls my ears, building walls with
brick-red
blood, cell by cell
beating furiously against the pressure—
‘don’t ignore me!’
With those words it crawls it wrathful way up and out
of my mouth and
SCREECH!
The parasite speaks over me, vaulting over my
tongue:
‘here’s what you wanted!’
Little pearls floored by my fists
green bloodied fingernails, lava spewed across the
table
talons rake the earth and stoneware
acid rainfalls lining grooves in my cheeks
ashen casts of faces caught in the pyroclastic surge.
Guttural
glue hot garroting and burning me inside out,
the steam blinds me as I scream.
The judges’ gavel falls faster than my fists
upon the plate CRACK, cutting edge judgement follows:
I am too much for anyone to bear beyond myself.
Do so now, send the dog back out, quietly, quickly, go
to your room,
childhood.
And
so this creature’s wails become
whines become whimpers wept shamefully pleading
‘hold me’.
These are childish reactions in their
infant-sized enormity—
but my claws comply with contempt
compression upon my skull. Oh, thought, your absence is
noted
only when you return!
When did you desert us?
Or, did I, you?
No, do not retract these talons now
that the moon is high and fully frames them as mine. Its
light what glistens upon my gashes
spotlights the source for me to reciprocate
my suffering upon it. Suffocate it
quickly, quietly. To me acquiesce and listen
for once
when I say they never will for us in this tantrum
state.
A flood of guilty and ugly conscience rises—
with every hatchet buried in my chest,
I unearth another.
Giorgia Woolley is an autistic poet and writer who can find a song to suit every possible occasion. She spends her time writing experimental poetry pieces exploring things that are important to her: the preservation of information, neurodivergency, her emotions, and people being kind to each other.
She wore a seraphic smile to please
the gaze of others.
She found her many faces in the
lakes, the oceans, the streams,
that caress her supple skin.
The same way that I find myself,
not in the mirror across from me – that
figure is
limp.
Devoid of life.
Not in the mirror across from me,
but the crescent moons
etched into my palms.
And so, we are the same – the world
& I.
A vengeful vulture.
Far below us, night envelopes the
lands.
Chaos.
Pale blue filmy eyes carefully unravelling
Fractured curious souls.
A startling silence settles the void,
as the people await first broken light.
MARCH 2003
I) I think that I was born from terror.
A distant child who did not dare cry
or yowl.
I often questioned myself why I was
so afraid,
to speak. To be heard.
‘Melt my scorched flesh.
And bury me beneath your skin.’
I begged.
Only then will I be whisked away
into the smoke-adorned clouds to
witness the Mirages: familiar
gifts.
And I wail for I know my prayers will go unanswered.
II) A solitary life was death to some.
To me it was a boon. A blessing.
Beginning and end. That is our sole
purpose.
We are a cycle.
Of seasons – green, grey, pale
yellow and burnt amber.
We are a cycle.
Of memories – tainted with the soft colours of a child’s kaleidoscopic mind.
Are we also, perhaps,
a cycle
of tortured nostalgia and
self-inflicted wounds?
And so, one day I will disappear,
but for now I lay in the earth’s palms –
and for just one moment she and I
are infinite.
Untouched and Whole.
‘Oh, silent little lamb,’ she says
to me,
‘How I pray that fear never consumes
you in
the same manner which Saturn once devoured
his sons.’
‘The same manner in which
I must soon devour you.’
And she wails for she knows her prayers will go unanswered.
PRESENT
We are people made up of words.
Written, unspoken, fleeting words.
We are monsters made of half-told lies
and impending nightmares.
We love and we ruin.
We hate and we create.
We are everywhere all at once,
devouring, inhaling, perceiving
and yet,
We are all so utterly alone.
Perhaps,
this is what makes us such awful arrogant
creatures
who consume what is not meant to be
ingested
and bestow what is not ours to
grant.
We all have such an insatiable
hunger to be known.
To be desired.
To be remembered.
Yet, we choose to devour.
Hungry beasts litter the street
floors
as we speak.
FUTURE
But I am now free.
My mind no longer
controlled
by the limitations of my body.
My soul has been captured and
locked away by
the village people.
And as the ardent fire licks away
salty tears,
the crescent moon, he witnesses
such
naive and hollow Man: a familiar sight.
Man comes together to watch the
flames lick at the wretched beast’s heels.
And my heart – bloody and pure; yearns
for another chance.
One final chance, not for myself,
but for her.
I am no longer a silent child – a shepherd’s
little lamb.
And I will find myself grappling
with my purgatory state.
Narcotic murmurs threaten to spill from
my petal lips
unto the waves of heat and
humiliation.
Shouts of fury and rage.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Once more
trapped…
Am I truly her child?
Or simply:
A bird of prey.
Jannavi Rao is a dedicated writer with a hunger for romantic fiction and gothic suburbia. Her writings are an exploration of nostalgia infused with a brief yearning to understand the complexities of life. Her piece “Colours of the World” was shortlisted in the Whitlam Institute’s “What Matters Now?” writing competition in 2020.
