Susannah and the Elders You are Susannah and you cannot escape the Elders. You are beautiful and you are delicate, therefore—But it is more than that. Your face And your step is a titillation, An ongoing open invitation That bites at your naked heels. They smell your weakness, rendered Sensual, as you rot beneath your neck. Your mouth is a dead…
I came second place in the international chess competition. Lost because of something to dowith a rook. The international German competition, too—they told me my vowels were too dark. That was the same for the portrait competition. Even the judges of the brass band competition said that my tuba had the wrong kind of shine.…
A baby rabbit crawled into a Ziploc bag—sandwich size on my bedroom floor—its small stone-coloured body wedged sideways—doll eyes staring—lying so still I thought it must have orchestrated its own demise—which is what the coroner wrote on my brother’s death certificate after his motorbike lost control on the 20 km/h left-hand bend into Pauanui—he was…
at the end of his time on earthWu Daozi master of illusion painted a door in one of his pictureswhich he then openedand disappeared through in some writers’ accountssuch a flourish of legerdemainwould be emblematic of suicidebut Wu’s move surely placed himamong the immortals motive + means + opportunitythe ingredients of great crime or great artWu’s…
Fountain You seated me at the fountain to watch you throw small stones, like useless buttons, into the water. You were older than me, and kept forgetting my name and then remembering it, suddenly, like a taste. It was then you became the object of all my desire. Long after you left I coveted the shape of your body: your round waist, your dark,…
In the tiny bronze star embossed onto a teaspoon.In the panning that flickers quick between earbuds. In the moment of cold meeting hot breath.In the musk of the skin, post-hunt, I mean, in the ripening. I mean, when knees bend, when brow bone calls for dirt,I mean, in the urge to get lower still—I mean,…
Without totally orientalizing painter Tony Guo’s surreal vaudevilles, it’s difficult not to see the (violently) anxious eroticism of manga comic artist Junji Ito in his work. Like Ito, Guo’s figures suffer from an ecstatic dysmorphia (for example, Gardeners, 2020, a fractured self-portrait in which the artist literally dismembers himself). But unlike Ito the source of…
On days when the sky was absent of clouds, a certain man felt ill at ease. To alleviate this, he netted a stray, low-hanging cloud, and squeezed it inside a jar, tightly screwing the lid down. So on days when the clouds were scarce or absent, he held the jar above his head, and cheerfully…
I look across the bridge that leads out of the park and onto the street, then down at my sister’s pregnant belly. Once we cross the bridge danger might come from anywhere. I check behind, shade my eyes and scan the street ahead. My skin prickles, alert to any change in the air. We go…
Write, because something beautiful always breathes when you do. You already know the world is changing and being a writer is difficult. Breathe deeply. That’s one of the only things you’ll have to do on your own. None of your friends have any idea what writing is like, so both your privacy and writing won’t…