…The man we knew was hooded and smoothed,/walked as a panther through hospital wards,/ secret, sleek & springing off the balls of his feet./Now his eyes pace, pale-irised and clever… This set of six poems observes various types of relationship: intimate, collegial, family, cultural, and relationship to self. 1. Burn Thickness The man we […]
The Quarry Journal
A journal of creative writing by students at Macquarie University
Flying, Janet Holst
James stands at the bus stop with his schoolbag, waiting for the 722. It’s Wednesday, and he mustn’t be late home – it’s Mum’s choir night. But where is the bus? So much of his life is spent waiting, when he really wants to be moving. Ah, here it is at last, the bus, inching […]
Time to Talk, Ramona Hester
…When they were young they would refer to him amongst themselves as dadimiz, our father, yours and mine. Now there was nobody who shared this man as father. Nobody who shared her mother. Nobody to call her sister. They had lost a measure of themselves when Mehmet had passed away. This was one more slice […]
Seeking Sky from Rooftops, Angie Rega
Lilly waited to hear Walid snoring through the thin walls before sneaking down the corridor to the back door. The tiles underfoot always felt cool no matter how high temperatures reached. She crossed the asphalt road, mounted the steep stairs that divided Noura’s front lawn like a metallic zipper and climbed the ladder leaning against […]
Time Lost, Jamie Derkenne
‘Same old same old,’ said Julie, packing her day neatly into four words and using her sleeve to delicately pat the Madeleine cake crumbs from her mouth. Stefan nodded to say he knew the stuck-in-a-hole feeling. Berlin had been like that. Balmain was becoming like that. He wanted to go back to North Arm, but […]
The Riders, Helen Meany
Sister Veronica had a well-known knack for knowing if a student was looking at the clock, but Joyce Hocking stole a glance at the hateful face above the blackboard regardless. Still 1:47. Its hands had barely moved. The nun continued to stroll around the classroom, hands clasped behind her back, hovering over the shoulder of […]
The Poet, an abecediarian poem, E.C. Alberts
…another day/ another hour/another step towards closing my family’s bookstore forever/antsy with a feeling like sadness/antsy with feelings I don’t understand/ attempting to numb myself with work/ biting my lower lip until I taste blood/ blinking back tears as I pull apart the shelves… This poem is an excerpt from my young adult verse-novel, The […]
To Fall At Your Feet, John Elder
…It was a beautiful sparkling morning and Marmie said she was going to the river to make a fire on the rocks and bathe herself in the shallows and pick some flowers and put them in her hair like she’d seen in the picture book and could we all just leave her alone for half […]
The Citadel, Melissa Farrell
…The behemoth towers/ A fractured edge of the city/ Forged in its rows of sightless eyes/ And as darkness smears the day/ An elevator grinds and rumbles/Fills its belly with humanity/Radios and televisions fuse/In a babbled soundtrack/ From a selection of poems titled The Citadel ‘Whilst the night deepens/ The mortals within/ Fortify against […]
The Time Machine, Elizabeth Robson
It was a very long time ago for some but not for all. She only married him for his horses, so she said. She was a girl from the city and he was a boy from the bush. She attended Art School and soon found her calling as a teacher and he bred horses and […]