It came to me young, that lime-cordial sweetness with its surge then turning in on itself. // And I saw it in the iris of a boy I kissed; a boy who didn’t make it past the rope. Remember flecks of citrine, perhaps just mnestic afterglow. // Later, double-stacked green hearts would get us wide-eyed…
That time I lost my best friend because we turned seven and he figured out I was a girl been swallowing the bruises ever since :diffidence and valiant diplomacymakeup a homage to dropping out of art schoolred bra concealed by sorcerywedding ring from Temurewritten promises of safe passage: I would never deceive my wife, much less…
For Emilie Collyer the poet who is not the poet but is reading someone else’s poetry despite being a poet in their own right is bent over on the stage that is actually a staircase or perhaps a stairwell not bent over exactly but rather bending toward the light (or is the light bending toward…
Friday afternoons of my childhood are a vivid trinity;black, white, and Sister Tarcisius. On Hush Puppy cloud, her binary-hued habit floats, welcomes. Barely two octaves tall, with arms flung wide beaming, she wraps me, wholly. She greets in whisper,guides through the convent hall.All polished glory, perfect in its pureness,but for me not a note out of key. The door opens to…
in intermediate school i wrote my own creepypasta. my self-insert with a bow and arrow made of shadows was close personal friends with Slenderman, who helped her take revenge on all who had ever wronged her. in Minecraft, on my best friend’s server, i built a cobblestone tower which i’d climb at pixel sunset to shoot zombies and spiders across the grassy…
The Clean: In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul by Richard Langston. AUP (2026). RRP: $49.99. PB, 376pp. ISBN: 9781776711567. Reviewed by Joanna Mathers. Music artists The Clean emerged from Dunedin in the late 1970s and have exerted an oversized influence on independent music ever since, both in Aotearoa and internationally. Shaggy, shambolic, with…
Childish Palate by Shariff Burke. Tender Press (2026). RRP: $32.00. PB, 242pp. ISBN: 9780473762490. Reviewed by Cybonn Ang. Childish Palate, Shariff Burke’s debut short story collection, brings together eleven stories centred on protagonists from a range of Asian ethnic backgrounds. Food is involved in all of them—the business of it, the enjoyment of it, the…
In old age my parents lived like teenagers.They stuck things on the wall with Blu Tack,collected fluffy toys and cute cat pics.Their glassware came from op shops.They hung old sheets on the curtain rails. They let the trees overgrow the deck,fed leftover meat to the birds.They had their dinner at nine pm,sat watching TV hours…
Waitati diss track I have to get out of the swampwith its converted churches and artichoke smellwashing barrel roasters and cottage gardensdepruned roses freaking in the windcommunity hot tub orgies and whisper newslettersgeodesic veggie domes and homogeneously vegan potlucks a swamp is surrounded by mountainssea lions and water rats alike born every night at the…
Central Otago Out of the hill line, out of kilter, stack, pillar tilt of a wing in stone as if hand-tooled by a playful buildernot finished yet—moves in the freeze and thaw beyond eye-range, shedding and still lifting from within the way a grief might go through its stages having to come to the core again dark varnished to the perishing…