Elliotte eyed the trees through the kitchen window, flecks of ash scoring the glass. The morning was long, not that they weren’t all long. And as she stared at the knotted forms of the trees, she switched her mind off to the lukewarm water that rushed out of the tap, hit her hands and filled…
The Night of Nine Manhattans double-parked my cocktailsmarked me empress of the open bar while bridesmaids tussled in the firing line yet I was borne toward the thrown bouquetquick enough to call it mine and when I took that posy such a rage rose in me to want what everyone didand be made a woman by it…
I’m 27 and I’m tired. I have a pair of yellow crocs with fineliner drawings scrawled messily on top of them, I sometimes feel like I am living inside a blue curling wave with air bubbles just big enough to breathe inside, I miss waking up to the taste of another’s hair swiped around my…
Tēnā koutou katoa, This August, takahē farewells our Reviews Co-Editor, Ash Davida Jane, who leaves us to continue work on many other exciting projects, including the ever-impressive Tender Press. Ash has done such thoughtful and important work across our reviews over the past two years. This shift sees Angelique Kasmara, the other excellent half of…
The sky is black, red, and blue like a bruise. I press on it a little just to feel it ache. It spins above me, the world smearing into streaks of paint. I roll over just in time as the second wave of vomit rushes up to greet me. I hongi the sidewalk, pressing my…
Vashti Johnstone is a woman who won’t be pigeonholed. With a strong sense of self, she is a diva who sets herself apart, uniquely positioned in the world of art, once even experiencing rejection because she didn’t subscribe to an easily identifiable genre. One might describe Johnstone as a New Zealand contemporary landscape-inspired abstract expressionist.…
My clothesline is a semaphore where signals pegged onto it connect me to friends and family—here in New Zealand, and in London, St Petersburg and Porto. The line flies up into another sphere where clothes flap in the breeze on a good drying day for friendship, life and death. New Zealand, in the nineteen fifties.…
Tara Black is a cartoonist and the author of graphic novel, This Is Not a Pipe. They have been known to post comics and graphic recordings at substack.taracomics.com.
Ivy League I wish I could weara polo shirt withoutlooking stupid, or ridein a regatta withoutmy fringe flying up, revealingmy premature wrinklesbecause I keep my eyebrows upeven at rest. The bad tasteof rich boys makes mesweat. Sponsors’ namesmake me sweat—foundationswhich seem to me darkendless aislesof mood lighting.I have wanderedthe days searchingfor myself in car windows.I…
Excerpt from ‘sequence spell(ing)’ further than we go the tune oflurching over water & blurry vision underwater is damp is stable it iswatching us both water makes us happy bottled water can be refrigerated can bebought water trickles down a drainpipe &spotted sky (re)arranges water water is aslot machine for water water is a thing…