ARNA 2021

ARNA 2021 The Journal of the University of Sydney Arts Students Society

First published 2021 by The University of Sydney Funded by the University of Sydney Union and the University of Sydney Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Individual Contributors 2021 Foreword © Jenna Lorge and Thomas Israel Afterword © Trent Taylor and Angela Xu Illustrations © Kate Scott, Justine Hu and Rhea Thomas Layout © Jenna Lorge and Thomas Israel © The University of Sydney 2021 Images and some short quotations have been used in this book. Every effort has been made to identify and attribute credit appropriately. The editors thank contributors for permission to reproduce their work.

ISSN: 2209-3931 ARNA: The Journal of the University of Sydney Arts Students Society Reproduction and Communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to Sydney University Press at the address below.

Fisher Library F03 University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Email: sup.info@sydney.edu.au Web: sydney.edu.au/sup Cover Photo by Alex Robinson Cover Design by Justine Hu

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY This edition of ARNA was edited, compiled, and published on the occupied lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, and that the occupation is violent and ongoing. We give our deep respect and solidarity to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

This land always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

To the students who have shared their talent, support, and friendship with us.

You have made ARNA 2021 not only possible, but something to be proud of.

Publication Directors Jenna Lorge Thomas Israel General Editors Angela Xu Trent Taylor Creative Directors Alex Robinson Kate Scott Lead Editors Grace Hu (Essays) Margaret Li (Prose) Sally Chik (Poetry) Editors Alexander Back Ezara Norton Iris Yuan Justine Hu Kat Porritt-Fraser Kowther Qashou Loren Chakerian Rhea Thomas Trinity Kim Zara Zadro

Contents Jenna Lorge & Thomas Israel 11 Foreword Hannah Roux 15 Oyster Amy Tan 16 Between Minutes Kate Woodbury 17 How to Grow your Underarm Hair Under the Guise of Self-Love Saranya Agar 18 The Last Night at Harry’s Cafe De Wheels Sally Chik 21 Goliath Hannah Roux 22 Australian?

Ibrahim Khan 27 Tranquility Riley Treisman 28 A Monkey’s Wedding Kate Woodbury 42 Stain Caitlin Marinelli 43 Emma Murphy 46

Nathan Tran 48 The Bleaching William Duke 49 Diabolical Emancipation: The Witch in Wuthering Heights

Ava Maree Lansley 56 Like the Movies Nishta Gupta 57 Fold Kudzaishe Laura Khuleya 58 Before Angela Leech 59 Honey

Karen Leong 68 To a Mother Not Mine Neve Peters 69 Sara Hollie 72 2020 un-United States National Anthem Trent Taylor 73 Murder, the Moon and Music in the Summertime - The Cultural Impacts of the Summer of 1969 James Ramsay 80 Inside My Room Mo Giddy 82 The Makeshift Bookmark Hannah Roux 84 Spinning Thomas Sargeant 86 Two in Ones Thomas Sargeant 87 The Line Nico Smith 88 Allen Chan 89 Euphoria Angela Xu & Trent Taylor 91 Afterword

Foreword The past year has been, simultaneously, a whirlwind of eclectic catastrophe and humbling stagnation. This journal celebrates an sublime future that we’ve so dearly craved. However, this journal - this Moving through hardship cannot be done without looking exactly that; the musings and imaginations of students who have been suppression, solitude, and an undeniable quietness of life, these pieces Prior to this year, being a student provided automatic membership to a collective; a group of people coming together to learn, grow, and to become the people they wished to be in the future. However, recently it has felt, in many ways, that this membership was stripped from us.

Those of us who returned to campus found it barely breathing, its life force weakened by the lecture rooms which stood empty and the hallways that no longer felt the rumble of footsteps, like clockwork on each hour.

momentous bursts of colour, life, hope, and an appreciation for the little things. As you turn through these pages, think not of a student-body locked within a prism of the world’s woes. Instead, picture a group of people that carved new spaces for expression, connection, and the art of creating.

They turned to healing, reaching out their hands to their community in hopes to join us all together again. It is the membership to this collective of students that is going to show us out of the darkness we are currently blindly wandering through.

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As Editors-in-Chief, creating this journal has been a cathartic and rewarding process. We experienced this alongside our incredible editors and creative teams. They are the ones that have made this journal a possibility, and we thank them deeply for giving us a space to connect and work in unison with them.

The work in here is striking, confronting, sharp, beautiful and, at times, ethereal. We are honoured to have had the talented writers and artists we did to form ARNA this year. We thank you for collecting powerful, determined, and unrestrained push forward into a more optimistic future.

We hope all who engage with this journal embrace its pages with love and appreciation, just as we did.

This is ARNA 2021.

Jenna Lorge and Thomas Israel Publication Directors ARNA 2021

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Oyster Hannah Roux Crack me open like a goose-egg, like a mystic Frenchman’s art; Make me tremble like a banjo, like a wind where wild things are.

Am I hiding like an oyster? Am I waiting for a part?

Make me soft in egg-like wonder; crack me open from the heart.

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Between Minutes Amy Tan Living this imagined life of quiet, the perfect room of aesthetic, where I dance in the middle of a glass greenhouse, and the sun’s overdue overhanging, where my mind doesn’t have to chase, its wits into the blunt angry end, and the mid-term papers aren’t due, due, due… cottagecore: frogs singing their sing-song, birds laughing their pretty faces hoarse, charmed reading for decoration, academia without the academic, and there is much beauty in half-closed eyes.

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How to Grow Your Underarm Hair Under the Guise of Self-Love Kate Woodbury A stern disapproving glare from some random woman In her mind, she holds a whittling knife carving chunks of hair and skin and loathing.

Sweat clutches to these perfect tendrils, crystallising an exoskeleton.

I throw my arms upwards Worshipping to some endless chasmic stratosphere as if trying to stretch beyond myself beyond my torso beyond recognition.

To let these patches witness light and photosynthesise maybe they’ll bloom full heavenly. my chest compresses into self-conscious burden-some-ness.

Hide away, I slip inside myself.

Smooth sticky interior my skin, all hair.

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The Last Night at Harry’s Cafe De Wheels Saranya Agar That night, Min and her father existed amidst the various customs found at Harry’s Café De Wheels on Finger Wharf. They sat on a damp wooden bench holding hot pies on their laps. Mash and peas were slopped on top, mush like a javelin thrown in grass. Their paper plates bent under the thick weight of their food. Min had the chicken pie. Her father had the lamb.

Pairings of people sat scattered across the wharf on their own pled with city lights, occasionally stirred in its sleep.

Harry’s was a nostalgia-loaded food truck decked out with a glaring red neon sign. They put red and white checkered greaseproof paper under your pies and chips and slop of sauces. There was a subtle scent of frying oil and gentle electric hum that surrounded it. A collection of framed and signed photographs of celebrities and people of note covered its exterior walls.

Min’s father liked to take her on outings such as these. It was how they enjoyed each other’s company best. They tried new restaurants, saw strange movies and wandered around museums. Sometimes her father would take her on a tour of his favourite buildings in the city and tell her about their architectural feats. Other times he would take her to enormous book shops, and she would stack up piles of novels to read on their summer holidays.

Min was moving in a week. Her father had waltzed into her already half-empty room that day and demanded an impromptu adventure. She had always known that she’d go to London one day. But now the reality sat in her mind like a threat. When she had told him, her

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father had given her a smile and patted her back, proud and gentle.

When they had ordered their food, Min’s father had ummed and aahhed at the menu, swinging from side to side with his hands in the pockets of cheap cargo shorts. He’d paired this with a formal dinner jacket. This was something he did often. Min’s father ate ugly. He chewed loudly with an open mouth and breathed heavily through his nose. Gravy had already covered the entirety of his mouth.

Min’s father had long legs that would stride along a footpath while Min practically had to run to catch up to him. Whenever they watched a movie, he would take up too much space on the couch. Min had always found herself squeezing awkwardly into the spaces left as her father stretched long and thin, with all the pillows underneath him like a dragon hoarding treasure. He hummed whenever he did things, his tunes rough and out of key. Min tried to imagine a room in which the air had never carried his songs. He hummed now as he ate. She watched him bouncing his leg to the tune. He never could sit still. Min shared his restlessness.

Fat black bikes were parked in a row on the other side of the food truck. Helmets hung lopsided on the handlebars. About ten people in thick leather jackets and boots sat on diner chairs at the bench that jutted darkness of the night sky, their voices low rumbles like that of their bikes.

They weren’t loud or rowdy as Min had always supposed a biker gang to be, which is why she only noticed them when her father elbowed her and blatantly pointed them out, his eyes wide with a childish awe. Her gaze lingered.

They didn’t feel dangerous. There was a sense of strong comradery among them, sitting packed together, shoulder to shoulder. Min could feel the rush of adrenaline in the movements of their arms and the shakes of their heads. As she watched them, she could almost feel the rush of wind on her face, the smell of sea breeze and dust under boots.

They buzzed of uncertainty and adventure, the same buzz Min had in her own heart, knowing she could soon be something new.

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going, creating stories and pulling plot lines from thin air to explain their strange appearance at Finger Wharf. Min wondered if they had understandings about what to do if they lost each other on the road, got separated. If they did, she wanted them to tell her how to handle it. It’s much more dangerous to only be one bike on a highway Min thought - safety has the map and is miles ahead of you?

When they left, the biker gang broke the silence at Finger Wharf wide open. The roars of their motorcycles cracked the air like lightning.

Their helmets were locked onto their heads. In a chain they left, one by one, following each other onto the road. Her father whooped and yelled as they drove away. He shot up onto his feet and began wildly clapping, like they had done after they saw Turandot at the Opera House. Pieces of kept the part of herself that wanted to cheer along too, dormant, letting her father’s joy be enough for the both of them. She quietly wished they’d stayed longer, to keep the night alive. The departure of the biker gang’s company at Finger Wharf left Min empty. It signalled an end, a leaving, that was coming too close.

Sometimes Min’s father would drive her crazy with his demands.

Sometimes he wanted to do too much. He planned too many things, when sometimes all Min wanted to do was fall asleep to the reliable rhythms of her favourite show. Once, she’d promised that after her epiWhen she had woken up two hours later, she had run to the lounge ready After that, it was her that planned too many things, trying to clean the guilt from the memory of that lonely room. Pushing back the undercurrent of tears in her eyes, she watched him wave the last of the bikes away.

She felt like she was already remembering him.

When he turned to her at last, he was grinning.

Then he asked her, as if they had all the time in the world, ‘Shall we get dessert?’

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Goliath Sally Chik

For MB and MEC it was never written in the books but the day After the happy ending After the enemy has been cleanly disposed of After the main character becoming a Hero she sees herself growing older red stain blooming between dark eyes that are no longer hers she wakes up with trembling hands After every stone in her path is a heckling gauntlet haunted markers in tombs of nightmares and After she will stand she will dream anew

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Australian?

Hannah Roux

of my life. My main memories of my childhood are of the suburbs of bike (and to obey stop signs, with the help of my dad riding beside me) and of the nights we celebrated Halloween. Our neighbours in Greenside adult supervision, to knock on the doors in our silly extravagant costumes.

My mum would make caramel-coated popcorn to hand out in paper cupcake liners. There was some competition over the quality of the treats – and of the decorations. My mum’s caramel popcorn must have been the best, though, since it is the only one I remember clearly. how half-heartedly Australians seemed to celebrate Halloween. No-one on our new street was doing it. Tired-out Australian mums remember of teenagers wander by with buckets, and then – if they are neighbourly-minded – dash out to the store to make a showing of a half-hearted spider web or plastic pumpkin, and a box of chocolates. When my mum felt especially guilty, she would buy a box of Ferrero Rocher – but I doubt Australian parents ever felt that same pressure of the picture-perfect past, hanging over the present.

The other reason why our Australian Halloweens felt like a let down after our South African ones was this: my parents were tired.

Wealthy white families in South Africa have plenty of inexpensive help around the house. This is a blunt way of putting it. My dad once told me

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that he sometimes felt uncomfortable with hiring domestic workers, but that providing employment was one thing a wealthy person could do in South Africa to help with the high levels of unemployment (the words everyone pretends to be middle class if they possibly can, even the ridiculously rich. In South Africa, even modest middle-class wealth makes you wealthy – and you know it). Thus, it was practically a civic duty, my dad once explained, to employ a domestic worker: a nurse, a gardener, and a handyman.

This can sound strange to an Australian; it certainly sounds strange to me, now.

The days when my mum made caramel-coated popcorn and large house and walled property, with the swing and the aloe-bed out the front and the magnolia tree that blossomed outside my window – were what seems, in retrospect, to have been the high point of her career as a public health consultant.

No Australian parent today, burdened also with high property prices and cost of living and the labour of running a house and keeping it respectable, would have been able to manage such competing demands.

I think I can date the time I realised this properly – the time I knew, down to my bones, how many of the things that lie behind what can seem to be

myself Australian for a lot longer than that, of course. This had mostly been to avoid the vague discomfort the phrase ‘South African’ had given me, even long before I shed it. at a new school. A girl in my class asked me where I was from (people can always tell, even now, from my accent, that I was born overseas). I said I

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was South African. She asked: ‘Why aren’t you black?’

If I’d been older, or more politically conscious, I would have answered: ‘Why aren’t you?’ It’s no stranger that a South African should be white than that an Australian should be. White people are no more naturally Australian than they are African. But for this girl – and the wider world – ‘Africa’ was synonymous with blackness. Australia was not.

I am also a victim of this ideology of the word ‘African’. When someone asks me where I’m from, these days, I don’t say ‘I’m South African.’ I say: ‘I was born in South Africa,’ and I am sometimes tempted to add, apologetically, ‘I’m not African-South African, obviously’ or to gabble out a rushed explanation of my accent, and the reason I don’t speak Afrikaans. This isn’t necessary: not many people are as ignorant still feels intuitively like laying claim to a racial, rather than a national or continental, identity.

But, I don’t have a national identity free from these racial underpinnings. My surname is French, but my most recent French ancestors lived four hundred years ago. My grandfather was Afrikaans-speaking – he might have said ‘I’m an Afrikaner’– but I am not.

I am sometimes tempted to avoid the question entirely. When I travel away from Australia, I have always said: ‘I’m Australian.’ I’ve never had to add: ‘Not Australian-Australian obviously.’ But this claim to identity is itself stretched and tenuous in ways it is easy not to see. In Australia, the history that makes a typical, imagined ‘Australian’ white is invisible, but only because of the way colonisation worked here: so much more viscously and ‘successfully’ than it did in South Africa.

White middle-class Australians don’t hire people of colour as domestic workers. Nor do they, in general, think of their national identity and their race in tension with one another. An Australian family calls itself middle-class, and they think of themselves as normal, even if they that colonisation has become invisible – and this only makes it more

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pernicious.

In 2019, when I was on that plane back from South Africa, it was near dawn. I was sitting near the back of a Qantas plane, full of redsiping with a passenger behind me, in the broadest Sydney accent I’d ever heard. The dawn was coming in through the plane windows, seemingly from below. It lit up the landscape like gold. I felt a huge relief washing ‘Australian’ might mean me.

This was a relief: it is a comforting thing to be able to claim a national identity. But the word ‘Australian,’ and the identity it describes, of a word like ‘African,’ is still a colonial one. The invisibility of this history, to many Australians, makes recognising the discomfort even more pressing. The dispossession of Australia’s Aboriginal peoples of their ancestral land was so much more complete, here, that even today there has been no real constitutional reckoning with them, as there was reckoning in South Africa with Apartheid, and with the revision of the Constitution in 1995-1997.

I have heard critics of movements like ‘The Uluru Statement from the Heart’ say that the past is in the past. Australia is the way it is now - we white people are not responsible for the sins of our ancestors.

Guilt is not passed on like blue eyes or the predisposition to breast cancer.

I’m inclined to agree with that last claim. None of my ancestors were Australian; it is impossible for me to be genetically tied to the past of white Australia. If I have a responsibility, genetically, for the history of colonisation (to say nothing of the ways colonisation is still a living and active force today) it is South African. But I think that when I call myself ‘Australian,’ I am taking on the weight of history.

If this act of naming myself Australian is not a matter of genetics, then it is a matter of language, and of culture, of the way we think of ourselves in the world. In the Uluru Statement, the 2017 National Constitutional Convention speak about the conception of Indigenous

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sovereignty as a spiritual notion:

This sovereignty is a fact like other facts: recognised or unrecognised. To say that you are ‘Australian’ should always mean to grapple with this fact. If it does not, if we take the privilege of calling ourselves ‘Australian’ greedily, without counting the cost in the present and the past, is no less real because it is not simply biological – our way of speaking, our language, our culture, and the sentence ‘I’m Australian’ are real and immediately present to all of us.

The word ‘Australian’ meant what it meant to me then – a blonde woman leaning against the side of a Qantas plane, gossiping with a past: the invasion of Australia by the British, and the systematic oppression of its Aboriginal peoples. Not being related by blood to those British people has nothing to do with my moral obligations now that I call myself Australian.

It is by identifying myself as ‘Australian’ in the present that I make myself responsible for the past.

References Davis, Megan et al. The Uluru Statement from the Heart. Presented at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, Uluru. Accessed 19/04/21 from: https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement.

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Davis et al., 2017.

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| Ibrahim Khan

A Monkey’s Wedding Riley Treisman ‘Bye mum! I’ll be back in a few hours.’

‘Bye chicky. Another date with what’s-his-face?’

‘Another date with what’s-his-face.’

‘Oh, it always is.’

I closed the door behind me, smiling slightly as I opened my laptop.

Arlo’s face popped up on my screen.

‘Hi!’ ‘Hi.’ He’s in Manly; I’m in Dee Why. We could have met in person, but both thought a virtual date (with no 1.5 metres of distance and no face masks) would be more convenient, at least while Sydney’s virus situation

Arlo works at Rip Curl and is a surfer dude. I work at Harry Hartog’s bookshop and am a homebody. He’s 6 foot tall and could have been snipped straight from magazine: sun-kissed everything and not my type at all.

‘Steer clear of pretty boys, Em,’ my mother often warns me, as we unload groceries or unwind on the couch.

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‘Nine times out of ten they’ll love themselves the most.’ beneath the furrowed brow and freckled cheeks.

‘…so yeah, I’m just holding out until this crappy weather blows over. Rainy days are the worst.’

My disagreement must have shown in my face. I can rarely hide what I feel. It makes me a terrible liar and a good friend. Well, to those who appreciate honesty, I guess.

‘What? You like them?’

‘I do, actually.’

‘No way.’

‘The sun and I have a like-hate relationship. I like it, and it hates me…well, hates my skin. I’m too pasty for this country.’

‘You live on the

and you don’t go to the

?’

‘I do! Occasionally. I just still prefer the rain. I go, like, twice a week, sometimes.’

‘In summer?’

‘Oh gosh no, winter. I’m good with the cold. Lots of body fat.’

He moves his phone closer to his face so I can see his narrowed eyes.

‘I’m kidding.’

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‘I’m going to change your mind.’

‘What?’

‘One day. Give me one day of summer to show you what you’re missing out on.’

‘Not 500?’

‘Nah, that’s overkill. Great movie though.’

‘Great movie. We love Zoey.’

‘We do.’

‘So when is this One Day happening? I’d like to be prepared. I don’t love surprises.’

‘As soon as it’s safer. I’ll let you know.’

‘Looking forward.’ ~ Lockdown time is slippery. I’m not sure how much time passes before he messages me with a link to an SBS article with the headline two questions.

1. Was I free on Sunday?

2. What T-shirt size was I? ‘Yes. Medium.’

‘Let’s meet at the giant shell sculpture at Manly Wharf.’

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‘The what?’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yep.’ ‘Charming.’

‘Also, you said you didn’t like surprises. Here’s the agenda for today.’

He sends me a screenshot from his Notes app.

-

Early morning surf Gelato for breakfast Fish and chips for lunch Aperol spritz in the afternoon Pavlova for dessert

‘How early, exactly?’ ~ It’s 6am and I am bobbing around in the ocean on a piece of foam, wearing a surf-vest stolen from Rip Curl’s back room.

‘Remind me why I agreed to this?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘I must really like y–’ ‘Oh, here’s a good wave coming!’

Hands on the back of my board, he spins me around, resting a

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hand on my calf.

‘Okay. Eyes up, paddle like crazy. Remember what we practiced in the sand. Feet underneath you, jump up, arms out to balance.’

I wish I could tell you I smashed it. Hell, I wish I could tell you water hitting the nose of the board and spraying into my eyes.

‘Better luck next time,’ he yells across the waves.

I can tell he’s trying not to laugh.

‘What’s next on the agenda?’ I shout back. ~ ‘So your real name is Mary? I assumed it was Emily.’

I pause to eye a pair of ornate brass earrings. $25. Not bad.

‘That’s me. Quite contrary. I hate my name.’

I’ve always loved the Saturday markets. I haven’t been in ages.

‘You do? Oh hey, you’re dripping.’

I hastily lick the side of the cone.

‘Mary Herring. It’s such a mouthful. Too many Rs. And being a redhead meant that I had two nicknames in school: Red or Bloody Mary.’

‘Did you have a preference?’ costume: googly eyes stuck on goggles, and a few scales painted on my cheek.’

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‘A red herring.’

To my surprise, Arlo laughs.

I smile, taking another mouthful of mango macadamia. Sense of humour. Tick. ~ ‘So, do you have a retail voice?’

‘A what?’

Arlo cocks his head on one side.

‘You know. A fake voice, for customers. I had one when I worked at Maccas. About an octave higher than my speaking voice. And I’d say I shudder.

‘Damn, I really thought I’d erased those things from my memory.’

The steps leading down to the beach were teeming with seagulls. beady-eyed thieves. when talking to a customer.’

‘Non-ironically?’

‘Non-ironically.’

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Arlo joins in. Unfortunately, this left our delicious greasy takeaway box unprotected.

But we don’t care. ~ ‘My mates give me such shit for liking these.’

The sun is setting over the Wharf. In the distance, a man and ‘They think cocktails are for girls?’

I lift the glass into the light, moving it in circles and watching the orange slice spin round and around.

‘Nah, they’d never say no to a Dark and Stormy or Long Island Iced Tea. They just wouldn’t drink anything bright red.’

I turn back to the couple and immediately look away. The woman ‘I just think people should be able to enjoy things.’

Before I could think it through, I blurt out,‘What else do you enjoy?’

He raises his eyebrows.

What have I done?

‘As a man.’

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And now you’ve gone and made it more suggestive. Great job, Mary. Way to dig yourself a deeper hole.

‘Well…’

He puts his elbows up onto the table, leaning over to position his lips close to my ear.

‘Sometimes, when I’ve had a long day…when I just need a release…’

Oh no. ‘…I give myself…’

Oh dear. ‘…a long bubble bath.’

He pulls back, grinning.

‘Oh my god, you’ve gone white.’

I shake my head.

‘How did you know what I meant?’

‘I could see the regret in your face.’

‘Do you actually like bubble baths?’ and I’m in heaven.’ ~ ‘Is this homemade?’

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Turner, that I am mesmerised by. One wall is covered entirely in Polaand summer fruit with teaspoons. He points to one of him and a woman with well-wrinkled eyes.

‘I started to surf because of my gran.’

‘That’s lovely.’

She said I came alive in the water.’

‘So she was fearless.’

‘And taught me how to be, too.’

‘Is she still with you?’

‘She died last year.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be. She died of old age. Lived a super full life. She was ‘That is so cool.’

‘Yeah. I like to think she taught me well, but I could never compare.’

He puts down his fork with a clink and looks up at me.

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‘I gotta ask, Em. Did I convince you?’

‘What?’

‘Convert you from winter to summer.’

I smiled.

‘I still love the rain. But now I think I’m a bit more inclined toward monkeys’ weddings.’

From the look on his face, it’s clear he thinks I’m secretly a nutty zookeeper.

‘A monkey’s wedding is where the sun is shining while it’s raining.

It’s originally a Zulu expression, I think. My parents are South African, I learnt it from them.’

He smiles.

‘Well, it’s not quite the epiphany I was after, but I’ll take it.’ ~ I haven’t heard from Arlo since our Day of Summer.

It’s been almost two weeks.

I think I remember him mentioning, while we were walking to the bar, how busy the shop gets during school holidays; but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

It’s a Wednesday morning. Perfect weather – torrential rain and scattered thunderstorms. It was meant to be sunny, but the forecasters had gotten it wrong. The sky was dark with heavy masses, and water poured from our drainpipe in tiny waterfalls. Out of the blue (or grey), his easy smile popped up in my WhatsApp.

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‘Em?’ I see the ellipsis, so wait for his next message.

‘It’s raining.’

‘Thanks, Captain Obvious,’ I reply. After some hesitation, I add a cry-laughing emoji.

‘It wasn’t supposed to rain today.’

Something is wrong.

‘Are you okay?’

What was it?

More typing. The ellipsis disappeared, then reappeared a few seconds later.

‘I don’t know.’

I check Google Maps. There’s a bus to Manly in 12 minutes.

‘Would you like me to come over?’

A pause.

‘Yes.’ ~ Arlo sits on the other side of the couch, hands in his lap. He’s staring at a small toy car on the mantelpiece, the same colour my Aperol spritz had been.

‘Arlo, what’s wrong?’

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He starts, as if only just realising I was there.

‘Um.’

‘It’s been exactly a year since my gran passed.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘She was so joyful, but so short-tempered. Impulsive. Would argue with anyone – her neighbour, her gardener, any cold caller who had the die, not until those last few moments.’

He was still looking at the toy car. Not at me.

‘We would have picnics on the beach every Sunday, and she’d though – she said they’d make me strong. Then we’d wade in together.’

He met my gaze only momentarily.

‘Right before she left us, she made me promise…she made me promise never to waste a sunny day.’

To keep the memory alive, I thought.

‘To keep the memory alive.’ His lower lip was wobbling.

‘So every sunny day, I wake up and go. I swim, I surf, I walk for hours, I get so sunburnt even aloe vera can’t save me, I get whipped by sand and thrashed by waves because…’

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‘Because if I stop…I’ll let her down.’

He drags an arm across his face.

‘And now it’s raining, exactly one year after she left.’

He buries his face in his hands.

‘Arlo…you should know why I love winter so much.’ whites of his eyes are pale pink, red-rimmed.

‘Rainy days are made to be wasted.’

‘There are literally no expectations. You can stay in your pyjamas all day and just watch the rain trickling down the window and not feel guilty at all. Or eat a whole carton of Ben and Jerrys. Or binge-watch every season of Friends. Again.’ laughter.

‘They’re days for thinking, or for not thinking. Being with loved ones or being with yourself. Productivity or nothing at all. It doesn’t matter.’

‘You can go if you want to, you know.’

‘What?’

‘It’s clear I’ve blown it. No one wants to date a cry-baby.’

‘You’re being ridiculous. I don’t want tough. I never have. I want softness.’

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Without warning, Arlo launched himself into my arms, his wet cheek against my sweater. I felt his lips move against my neck. A low murmur, still husky with tears.

‘Let’s go get Ben and Jerry’s.’

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Stain Kate Woodbury I have bled incessant for the past 4 months.

I no longer notice jam-spotted underwear.

No longer awaken (shocked) to the drip drip drip of garnet-gold, Crowning, down suckled thighs what runs from me now becomes part of me: dripping loss and smearing me anew.

A bedsheet is a memorial ground only when I remember to turn downwards and spot blood again, anew.

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Caitlin Marinelli

There were alpacas at the farm. They craned their long necks as we walked towards them and spat at us when we patted their soft coats. panoramic view of the golden countryside. Fecund trees bearing grapes and pears and apples rose up between white alpacas, hammocks and chrome grass tennis courts. And there, small in the corner of the glass, was the lilac sea, lapping at decaying wood and rock.

Lunch was served at noon. Roast pork with crackling, green beans with bacon, mash potato clouds, vibrant salads with crunchy little nuts that nudged themselves in the nooks and crannies of our teeth. Thick savory smells hung in the air long after the last crumb had been licked away. For dessert, a parfait, decked high with layers of sponge and jam and cream with chocolate shavings on top. It was sweeter than shy little kisses in the attic games room. My teeth ached eating it. The adults poured glass after glass of deep red wine, swirling crystal stems in front of laughing, stained mouths. Sitting with them was like peeking into a secret society, a world of unreachable things that only they knew. Any attempts to listen to their conversation would yield only confusion. They held some sort of key that was missing from my mind. Another bottle was introduced to the party and they told us kids to go outside; they would watch us through the glass With a full belly, I took to the hammock, strung between two towering trees and swaying slightly in the heavy summer breeze. I thought of nothing save feelings of watermelon smiles and the thrill of shy kisses from a pretty boy and the mystery of dank and colourful board game rooms. Looking up, the golden light swirled through lush leaves, then suddenly a smattering of shadow fell upon my face.

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I heard no sound as they approached, felt nothing but a pain from underneath as the boys lashed out, kicking with thick tennis shoes at the underside of the hammock. Beat after beat, I curled inwards, relentless as they were in their thrashing, only aimed at areas covered by clothes. When their white shoes turned pink and something thick dripped One of them looked back. He wiped his hand across his mouth and laughed.

‘Faggot,’ he said.

For a long time, the hammock swayed, recoiling until the damp cloth turned sour. I prised myself out. Surely those inside had seen it, but no, they were still clinking glasses and tittering happily. Not wanting to go back inside by my lonesome and face the shame, I hobbled after them, down a yellow-brown gravel road, fuscous in the shade that led to the docks, far closer than I had thought that grey sea was before.

When I broke through the foliage of grass and weeding trees, there was no sand, only pebbles and twigs and shards of bottle-green glass stuck between them. The three brothers had already braved the daring each other to jump into that cloudy water. in, the waves grew larger, as though their spindly bodies had displaced the water. Something wet lapped at my toes. The water had delivered

trailed in its wake. It begged to be touched, to be felt. A nearby stick, smooth, as driftwood often is, was limber in my hands. I gently nudged the mass and a tacky, watery substance clung on to the stick, snapping back as I pulled away. I prodded it again, the thin outer-dermis broke and the stick stuck into something viscous and gluey. I sunk the stick in fur-

44

ther, deeper, deeper, until it came out the other side but that impaled glob still moved pathetically. It gurgled and an urge ripped through my chest; a desire for it to cease. Again, and again, the stick was thrust in and then used to mush a paste upon the rocks, stirred around like batter. I willed it to die, if only to absolve myself of its misery. But how do you kill a thing without a heart, without a brain. A thing that doesn’t bleed.

A warbled scream punctured the air. I stood to see that there, in the midst of the sea, was a thrashing of foam. Three bodies wacked through the water in a frenzy, heaving and panting when they reached their skin.

They saw me, a dozen or so yards away, staring at them. They ward like the tide. Feet beat upon rocks. Eyes stung in the salty air. Quick, crawled to my feet as I stumbled over stones as I tore my palms on broken glass and as a blunt force to the nape of my neck forced the ground to fall upon me.

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The Effects of Earth and Chocolate Emma Murphy The anxiety in my stomach sprouted a hand that tickled up my spine, where it stopped and latched the back of my neck It stole my tonsils, throat and my windpipe leaving my body cadavered frozen and breathless Chilled I needed to thaw My stomach lit a match soothing the frozen knuckles

The bed turned to Jell-O It consumed me, Breath It was okay I could breathe No… The waves of jelly regurgitate me, slamming my body onto the deck of a wrathful ship A storm raged and the boat lurched back and forth

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Then it was okay It was sunny and the bedroom walls were a soft baby blue But, the carpet grew above me, like trees they itched for the soil in my stomach I could blink and walk and talk They stood still and were jealous Their branches left vengeful buds dormant in my pores, waiting Breath.

It was okay.

Sleep now … perhaps forevermore.

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The Bleaching Nathan Tran When we arrived in this country, we could not speak English. So in school, we found comfort in maths ‘til equations became our language: 8 over 4 equals 2 10 times 5 equals 50 Clear pale skin over a thin body equals someone pretty.

It’s an outdated equation that’s been passed on for generations.

Porcelain skin. Double eyelids.

Teaching kids that beauty is a black and white thing is painting civilisation with the same colours the nuclear bombs did in Japan.

After the bombing, the nuclear radiation bleached everything it touched, so every time you say ‘only pale Asians are beautiful’, your words become bombs that bleach cities.

When you tell me beauty is a black and white thing, you are just describing the colours you are painting us with: an aftermath of black shadows and bleached city.

Is that why they call beautiful people bombshells?

If you wanted us to be pale and skinny, congratulations. You succeeded.

Because you are killing all the colour left in our culture and leaving pale skeletons behind.

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Diabolical Emancipation: The Witch in Wuthering Heights William Duke supernaturalist scholarship on the Brontës. Critics often skirt around her, instead looking to her demonic counterparts, such as the vampire or dominant archetype o

1

deed an abomination; while the Angel stays at home, sweeping the hearth into the night.

However, to revive the witch’s critical value, we must look beyond a conception of the Angel in the House as merely her pathetic antagothreat to female liberation who must be killed.2 Nina Auerbach, however, rejects Woolf ’s homicidal response; the Angel, she believes, should not in turn demonic potential.3 For Auerbach, the demonic capacity of the witch thus exists latently within the Angel, forging a shaky continuum beat night and wreak havoc.

In Emily Brontë’s and her cataclysmic potential is embodied in Catherine Earnshaw. Cath1 2 3

Dickerson 1996, 120.

Woolf 2008, 309.

Auerbach 1982, 73, 108.

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Brontë’s masterpiece. Destructive, incompreconvention, lying outside the institutions of family and marriage without concern for the laws and contracts that regulate these institutions. I argue the are bound together by the ‘unholy allegiance’ known as the Devil’s Pact.4 The Devil’s Pact was an exchange between the witch and the Devil in which she would sign over her soul and in return be granted powers, freedom, fame, and fortune. This pact allows Catherine a life outside the angelic, homebound world of Thrushcross Grange. In , bility for an unconventional, wicked life unbound by the puritanism of

The Devil’s Pact to draw Catherine towards the emancipatory deviancy of witchcraft. satanic, explicit in his epithetical status as an ‘imp of Satan,’ ‘evil beast,’ ‘goblin,’ ‘demon,’ and ‘ghoul or vampire.’5 Homeless and fatherless, he is not allowed in Catherine and Hindley’s bedrooms, instead forced to sleep on the landing of the stairs (37). He becomes the ‘demonicw force introduced into an otherwise peaceful home,’6 corrupting the seasonal fertility of the emergent harvest7 by contaminating the Heights with ‘bad feeling,’ culminating in Mr. Earnshaw’s sudden sickness (38).

This coincides with Catherine’s incipient frustration with disciplinary Christianity, as she derides Joseph’s ‘religious curses,’ ignores her father’s 4 Broedel 2003, 24.

5 Brontë 2003, 39, 107, 110, 116, 330. All subsequent references will be incorporated in the text.

6 Reed 1988, 71. harvest’ (36).

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injunctions, ‘Go, say thy prayers, child,’ and laughs at Nelly’s exhortations herself into through a metaphorical incantation of black magic as she This implication initiates her transition into witchhood, as Catherine commits herself to the asocial and violent existence enjoined by the as rude as savages’ (46).8 Together, these ‘unfriended creatures’ desecrate the sanctity of the Christian way of living, kicking religious texts into dog kennels and gallivanting through the wild moorland instead of attending Sunday church (47). The perverse sexual relationship between the witch and Satan manifests in the the undertones of ‘child sexuality,’9 implied through the children’s sadomasochistic behaviour, ‘punishment forgot everything the minute they were together’ (46-7). With its ‘quality 10 their relationship refuses to conform to or be recognised by any conventional social understanding.

‘They were invisible,’ Nelly observes, after they disappear and escape into the moors one night (47).

Breaking the Pact However, Catherine’s visit to Thrushcross Grange interferes with her diabolical emancipation, redirecting her towards the ‘purifying’ ideology of the Angel in the House. The graphic intersection of phallic and menstrual imagery in Skulker’s attack, ‘huge purple tongue hanging out... and the regime of womanhood it violently inaugurates her into (49). This inauguration pulls her away from the diabolical ‘heathenism’ of her life 8 Reed, , 71. Reed also interprets this moment as a demonic exchange of vows, but he instead links it to the demon-lover ballad, not witchcraft. However, Reed (7-8).

9

Thompson 1967, 145. Giles Mitchell also draws attention to the intersection

1973, 32.).

10 Miles 1990, 88.

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purifying rituals of washing her feet, plying her with food and drink, combing her hair and giving her new shoes (50). When she eventually relationship through the typical social custom of a handshake. Now, Catherine ingratiates herself into the Linton family, intent on marrying into their ‘wealthy, respectable’ home to become the ‘greatest woman ‘civilised marriage and domesticity are not sympathetic to daemonic quality,’ and Catherine begins to feel this in her continued desire for the deviant hedonism of diabolical life.11 For instance, when Edgar visits the Heights, Catherine becomes ‘irresistibly impelled by the naughty spirit within her,’ as she violently pinches and slaps Nelly, eliciting an orgasmic of an aristocratic marriage, as she later confesses: ‘I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven’ (81). This is made 12 antithetical to the mortality of marriage and domestic life, which is merely ‘foliage in the woods,’ dying and changing by the season (82). Catherine’s dream of me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights’ (81, emphasis added).13 In its breaking of this pact, Catherine’s decision to become the lady of Thrushcross Grange disastrously ruptures domestic convention rates from Catherine, she raises a violent thunderstorm, demonically perforeshadowing the infernal destruction that will imminently ‘engulf all the characters’ (85-6).14 11 12 Auerbach 1982, 101.

13 Dickerson 1996, 78. Dickerson states that the dream ‘prophesises her ultimate turn away from the conventional, orthodox, and material world as represented by Christianity…and Thrushcross Grange.’

14 Miller 1968, 115.

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to the Grange; just as the witch cursed households with spoiled crops and diseased land, so too does Catherine precipitate sickness in the Grange, killing Mr. and Mrs. Linton almost instantly. Incompatible with the life of the homebound Angel and her project of instilling domestic harmony, Catherine is a destructive agent within the Grange’s hermetic world, met-

and silence’ by sending her ‘breathless and wild,’ and nocturnally restless auspicious weather, ‘mellow evening…soft sweet air,’ and is characterised as a satanic intrusion, ‘an evil beast prowled between it and the fold’ (93, re-emerges, symbolised when Nelly reunites with Hareton, whose ‘baby features’ have become ‘distorted’ by ‘malignity’ and ‘the spread of such sexual perversity, pulling everyone into an infernal loop of havoc. After he grabs a poker and breaks the ‘lock from the inner door,’ send Catherine ‘excited’ and ravenous, ‘grinding her teeth, so that you might fancy she would turn them to splinters!’ (107, 116, 118).15 Release Within this diabolical uproar and domestic unrest, Catherine can powerfully reconnect with her emancipatory witchhood – a process, however, that necessitates a deadly mental and emotional breakthrough. This 16 begins with Catherine spurning her domestic identity, equating her titles, ‘Mrs. Linton…lady…wife,’ with a tormented, obsequious existence as ‘an exile, and outcast,’ shut out into an ‘abyss’ where she ‘grovelled’ (125).

The haunting phantom that Catherine glimpses in the mirror is thus not her, but as Nelly tells her, ‘Mrs. Linton’ - the spectre of wifehood and 15 over Catherine, eliciting the intense ‘sexual overtones’ in her response.

16 Catherine shouts the ‘clock is striking twelve!’ before she has the dream of being back in the Heights (123).

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Experiencing a resurgence of diabolical power, ‘raising herself up all burning,’ Catherine begins to exorcise this phantom, longing for the life of witchcraft she once had, ‘I wish I were out of doors – I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free’ (122, 125). In her delirium Catherine returns to her ‘wicked waywardness’ and witchcraft; yielding supernatural strength, bracing extreme heat and the freezing cold, using extrasensory perception to see beyond the ‘misty darkness,’ divining her ‘a tempest of passion,’ which ‘she in the height of ’ (126, 128, 130, emphasis added). To treat this ‘tempest of passion,’ the village doctor advises that she needs ‘perfect and constant tranquillity,’ but Catherine resists this ‘cure’ of angelic domesticity, instead immersing herself into each other in a hellish passion, where they ‘burned with anguish,’ but ‘did not melt’ (158, 160-1). Envisaging her imminent advent into this ‘glorious comparably beyond and above you all!’ (162). Childbirth - a conventional female rite of passage - thus transforms into a diabolical emancipation, giving birth to the motherless Cathy (167). Her death perhaps underlines domestic order in Cathy and Hareton’s marriage - however, its emancipatory subtext can not be forgotten.

Conclusion phose, bewitch and kill. The critical response to her detracts from this. At the height of the persecution of witches during the early modern period, she represented everything ‘wrong’ with women: their degeneracy, sexual excess, and proclivity towards temptation and evil. But, as Auerbach contends, this is a fallacy: the witch proves that ‘woman is not frailer than man is, but stronger and more powerful; her nature is broadly demonic rather than fallibly human.’17 ical power persists, as she haunts the world of ; her diary, like a grimoire, summons her spirit, and she becomes a phantom of local 17 54

Auerbach1982, 108.

Emily Brontë imagines a new future for women, where their true power can transcend all, reaching to, as Catherine terms it, the ‘far beyond.’

References Auerbach, Nina (1982). bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Broedel, Hans Peter (2003). . New York: Manchester University Press.

. Cam-

natural. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. . New York: Rinehart & Company.

Miles, Peter (1999).

. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan. , 114-16. Englewood, NJ: Pren-

tice-Hall, Inc. Mitchell, Giles (1973). Incest, Demonism, and Death in 23(1): 27-36. in

17(1) : 1-19.

Reed, Toni (1988).

The University of Kentucky State Press.

Alastair Everitt, comp.

Cass & Co. Ltd.

. Lexington, KY:

, 138-51. London: Frank

Essays, 307-15. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Like the Movies Ava Maree Lansley

His hand sets on lower back above tennis courts little heads swarm into nests of phones kisses clatter goodbye honeys the magazine loads in my mind how far could an AR-15 shoot from this height?

He pulls tighter to my side rests chin on temple high would it be like the movies?

Their heads pop open gushing chunks his sloppy red I love you cuts through its warm butter trickles down to the bullet holes I love you more.

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Fold | Nishta Gupta

Before Kudzaishe Laura Khuleya

Did you ever notice that when I looked at you my eyes seemed to shine with a guileless wonder. I often wondered what you thought of me Standing right here in front of you with eyes almost drenched in lust and bad intentions.

You, a wolf, and i, a defenseless rabbit confusing hunger and desire. I did not complain when you dug your teeth in my neck, I simply apologised for bleeding onto your fur. I did not complain when you ripped open my chest and toyed, I could only laugh and tell you it did not hurt. Before you devour me once more my darling wolf, do me a favour and pick out bloodstained teeth

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Honey Angela Leech The day’s heat lingered into the night. We were in my parents’ room, stretched out across their double bed. I remember a tangle of freckled limbs and knotted hair lolling about under the ceiling fan, Hazel’s legs thrown across my belly and the cat curled up on our father’s pillow.

It was late, almost half-past nine. We’d been home from the Warrens’ neighbourhood Christmas Eve party for hours. Hazel and I had run back; raced across the overgrown nature reserve, held our breath past with the spare key.

The Warrens lived one over, on Telford Street, in a white brick house with a chlorine pool and a hive of bees in their backyard. Mum and Dad were still there, of course, busy drinking Mrs Allen’s fruit punch.

This is how I picture them: swaying along with ‘How to Make Gravy’ in her yellow dress and his dark Polo, dizzy and laughing and telling loud stories about the trip they took to South America the year before I was born.

Without them, the house felt wrong. I was used to chatting kookaburras and a bubbling kettle, the white noise of the news, forgotten the dark. The lights on the Christmas tree blinked at me from the living room. An uncanniness, like goose bumps up the backs of my arms, a tightness in my lungs. Passing headlights crept across the walls.

I could hear Mum’s voice telling me to keep them open, to let out the muggy air. But the tangle of shadows outside had raised the hairs on my arms; I double-checked all the locks.

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their ceiling fan. Catching him in her arms, she dropped him on their bed and threw herself across the mattress a moment later. I twisted myself between them.

Buzzing cicadas and the cat’s purring and the quiet drone of the fan. I thought Hazel might have fallen asleep, but after a while, she stuck her head up and looked at me.

‘Do you think Fish gets hot?’

‘I don’t think so.’ minding for the couple next door. He had a small glass tank with a pink plastic fern in the corner. She had spent half an hour positioning it right in the middle of our kitchen island, and Mum had let her keep it there.

She rolled across the mattress, squirming from the heat. ‘Do you think he gets lonely?’

I shook my head. Hardly a moment went by without Hazel brooding over his tank.

‘Dad said they’re very territorial. Fish probably likes it better by himself.’

‘Could we sit with him?’

I prodded at her belly. ‘You’d break his tank,’ I said, and Hazel scrunched her face at me. Then something changed, and she turned serious.

‘Do you think he’d like a bigger tank?’ had been able to talk about since the moment the neighbours dropped

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the window. The drone of the fan died away and Hazel yelped and the cicadas buzzed and the cat had gone quiet.

Hazel grabbed onto my arm. ‘Junie?’

After a moment I said, ‘The power’s gone out.’

Warm air had already started creeping in through the open close behind. The Christmas tree cast jagged shadows on the carpet. In the kitchen, Hazel leaned her elbows on the island and peered into the nothing: my thoughts were caught on the branches that scraped the living room window. I pulled two torches from the second drawer, set one down I settled on a stool and closed my eyes, cooling my forehead on the island countertop. I heard Hazel click her torch on. And I heard Hazel She pulled at the fridge door. I cracked my eyes open to her resting her head on the shelf, beside the potato salad Mum had made for tomorrow’s Christmas lunch. Hazel yawned. Fridge-air tickled my arms.

I looked up at the clock, squinting to see the hour hand in the million years away. We had left the party at seven-thirty; I glanced out the kitchen window towards the driveway and wondered when Mum and Dad would be home.

Hazel groaned beside me. After a moment, I stood and sat by the front door, pulling on my special Christmas sandals, struggling with the buckles in the dark.

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Hazel caught my eye from inside the fridge. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m telling Mum and Dad the power is out.’

‘Can I come?’

I looked out onto the street, at the nature reserve that ran alongside the road, and back at Hazel in her orange pyjama shirt and shorts. Shaking my head, I said, ‘You stay here.’ When she frowned at me, I added, ‘In case Mum and Dad get home before I do.’

I pushed the spare key into the pocket of my dress and with a click of my torch, I slipped out the door before she could say anything else.

Heat rose from the asphalt and tickled my calves, the road was sticky under my shoes. Cicadas buzzed from the nature reserve and the powerlines drooped above my head. I headed down the road, held my breath past Cemetery Lane, but stopped short at the clearway through the nature reserve. Dark hollows in the bush made gaping faces and the branches grasped at my skirt, my hair, my ankles. My breath caught in my throat. I almost took a step forward, and then a noise like laughing cut through the scrub. I turned my torch back towards the footpath on the other side. There was a long way around to Telford Street.

The Warrens had been the most interesting thing to happen to Apollo Bay since I could remember. Their only daughter – sparkling joining the local paper and spearheading a piece that scandalised the long-standing district Council Member into resignation. Their house, , was the tallest one for kilometres: new and clean, barely a year trucks full of European furniture and Impressionist

.

pathway was light, pebbly gravel that clicked and shifted underfoot.

Three knocks on the door, and then the sound of someone calling

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from inside. A few moments later Clementine Warren stood before me, wrapped in a towel and still dripping from the pool.

‘Hey Junie,’ she said. ‘Welcome back.’ She pulled her towel tighter around her shoulders, looked out at the road behind me. She asked, ‘Were you after the honey?’

I froze, suddenly shy, and said nothing. She laughed, breathy, and disappeared around the corner for a moment. When she stepped back and a few jars of honey.

‘Your parents forgot it when they left,’ she said. ‘It’s from our bees.’

I nodded slowly at her, taking the basket and trying to smile. If Mum and Dad had already left, why weren’t they at home? Maybe they had passed me on my way around the block. Maybe I had been too focussed on the breeze that shivered through the nature reserve, the way the moonlight coloured all the cars the same glossy shade of metallicpale.

I squeaked out a thank you, and she nodded at me. After a moment she said, ‘Did you want to come inside? I’m pretty sure there’s pavlova left. You could even borrow some swimmers.’

The sound of laughter and splashing spilt out of the house behind her. Hazel and I had forgotten to bring our swimming costumes to the party when we left home in the afternoon, and had been so concerned about missing out on the games and presents that we never went home to get them. I had always wanted to swim in the Warrens’ pool. But I felt my head shaking no in response. Mum and Dad would be home by now, I was sure. I didn’t want them to worry about me.

‘I’ve got to go home,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

I held up the basket of honey and took a few steps backwards

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down the path.

Clementine smiled. ‘Don’t mention it. Merry Christmas, June.’

‘Merry Christmas!’ I called back and made my way to the road.

There was a pause, and then I heard her close the door behind me.

Further up the street, or maybe through the bush, there was something like yelling, or maybe like laughter. The wind picked up for a second, and goose bumps rushed down my arms. I shone the torch around, all of a sudden feeling like someone was staring at me. I walked a little faster.

A few houses down, and I was at the Telford Street side of the nature reserve path. I could see the streetlights on Ferrier Drive had turned back on across the clearway. It was Mum and Dad, I was sure.

Hazel pouting about how I hadn’t let her come with me, the concerned glance they would share at the thought of me going alone at all. I knew I had to get back as soon as possible. The nature reserve loomed.

I kept my eyes on the dirt as I stepped toward the branches, the faces with their shadow-mouths. My steps were slow, measured, careful not to snap any debris on the ground, or trip over a rogue tree-root.

Everything had been easier when Hazel was running beside me, listening to the giggles that bubbled out despite her heaving lungs.

And then there was a noise like footsteps behind me. I turned point my torch directly at it, it said, ‘Hey,’ and stretched it’s arm out towards me. ‘It’s just me.’

It was Clementine Warren.

‘I hope I didn’t scare you,’ she said, and took a step closer. I let the honey basket hang loosely beside me, and kept my torch clutched in my other hand.

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‘I’m okay,’ I said, all of a sudden feeling like I wanted to cry. I swallowed, pushing my heart back down my throat.

She took a deep breath. ‘Would you mind if I walked you home?

It’s just across the reserve, right? Past Cemetery Lane?’

I could feel the tears behind my eyes, heavy and hot like the air inside the kitchen.

‘That’d be good,’ I said, and a silence fell over us as we followed the torchlight. I thought about the street-lights back on at Ferrier Drive; Mum and Dad forgetting the honey at her house.

When I was sure I could speak, I asked, ‘How long ago did my parents leave?’

She shrugged. ‘A while,’ she said. ‘Maybe an hour?’

I frowned but said nothing. The house was still dark when we stopped outside.

‘The power went out,’ I said.

‘Do you mind if I have a look?’ Clementine asked, and started to walk towards the side of the house. I watched from our front steps as she disappeared around the corner. A moment or two later, the whole house

I smiled at her when she came back. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and held up the honey. ‘For this and for coming with me.’

Clementine smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll see you at our house for a swim, soon?’

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‘Yes, please,’ I nodded. Then she waved at me and disappeared back into the bush.

I turned and raced up our porch, pulled the spare key from my pocket and burst through the door. ‘I’m home!’

But there was no reply; the house was quiet. No sign of Hazel. I pushed the door closed behind me, leaving the Warrens’ honey on the side table. Calling Hazel’s name, I walked towards our bedroom. Maybe she had managed to fall asleep. Then something caught my attention from the backyard, a faint sound like rain.

Stepping outside, I found Hazel by the blow-up pool. Her hair was falling out of a pink swimming cap, stretched messily across her head, her

‘Junie!’ she said. ‘Come swim with us.’

‘Us?’ The pool was barely half-full, the hose still gushing and wagging

in the corner.

All of a sudden, I couldn’t help myself. Laughter gushed out as goggles, and I shook my head at her.

‘Fish might like it better back in his tank,’ I said. ‘You might squash him if you get in.’

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down inside his tank. I thought she might get in the water, but instead bounced a few times, then laid herself down, spreading her arms out like making a snow-angel.

I climbed up too, laying beside her. And without a word, she curled into my side and fell asleep.

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To a Mother Not Mine Karen Leong Me, like Christ denied three times By blokes all bluster no bite the words congeal and die stuck to his throat No more a foot in mouth than lover’s oversight I ask of our loveling’s whereabouts Me, contained after passage over land and sea He, proprietor of my puplet Uncharacteristically silent until garbling — they, they Out for a walk! Out for a stroll! Out yonder entirely out of my control Would you let a bitch walk a bitch?

Dangle the life of your life—who’d no doubt follow, soft-pawed Not knowing better since he is man’s best after all that he’s just been pawned for pixel time Under the guise of a mother not mine There my boyfriend rots in front of his screen Here I pace in my sweet, collecting rage And ? where ? she trots I have not a clue Because man made it so handed the reins over; hoping my joy returns in one piece The prodigal son goes, astray, the maternal bogey alights with my furry footed love on a wild goose chase under the farce of care The man dog doesn’t follow in his stead, The old bitch who whelped him

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Neve Peters The frost bit a bit harder down here, down south Everything reminded her of what she had forgotten.

Had come full circle; she was home.

The house had entrapped her last year Stuck within its four jailed walls The freedom of adulthood revoked In this quarantine prison A grown-up in a child’s life.

Tween sisters, angry dads, Dirty kitchens, yelling

Then came a return to normal life.

Arrogantly, she imprisoned her teenage self, she chained her up!

Underfed and black-eyed, a dirty, emotional convict, That girl still cried for attention, but now she cried inside in a cage.

The university’s sunny streets couldn’t distract from childish desires That deep and longing A quiet patter of the heart A sob in the car Listening to her Dad’s old CD of The Fray:

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Summer came and she got a grip – hadn’t she asked for this?

She moved in and out, mustered an outward air of grace and silence Inside, she continued to beat that little teenager, while with bloody teeth She leopard-crawled towards a better, stronger, older her.

Behold this woman!

She reverse-parks her car!

(But she can’t reverse-parallel-park under pressure on Pitt St) She goes to the gym…almost every day!

(But drinks 600 calories on a night out) She’s a smoking seductress and the best he’s ever had!

(But he’ll leave in the morning and sometimes without so much as a good-bye while he thinks she’s still asleep he makes small talk over breakfast, while real intimacy is forbidden then she was excited, overzealous now she knows she’s just an end-of-the-night girl she is a back-up plan she is a cheap, dirty plastic bag and she just kind of wants to call mum).

Slowly, like skinks move in the winter Gentle like the bottlebrushes bloom, Or the kangaroo-paws extend their grippy little hands She dared to nurse a little homesickness while she’d been away.

The birds are louder down here in the frost.

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She takes pride in small comforts, the need for tea the need for hot water bottles on her feet the need for the morning light, catching in the trees the need to let her little prisoner breathe.

Her sister’s body, limp and asleep, fades away to The kangaroo-paws might just decide to bloom once more.

But press an ear to her breast, and maybe you’ll hear the chains rattle An imposter has taken over, or is it a rightful change?

She’s pretending to be a woman She pretends she’s not a girl.

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2020 un-United States National Anthem Sara Hollie O-oh shit, can’t you see?

All his pawns pearly white Oh so loudly he’s failed Justifying lies with ease He brought strife and bright scars Through pretending he’s right Oh the man has brainwashed Says sick are actually scheming With our pockets bled bare Everyone say your prayers

Oh ‘fake fake fake fake news’ Is all the boy can say In the land of injecting bleach Where ‘grab her by the pussy’ is okay

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Murder, the Moon and Music in the Summertime - The Cultural Impacts of the Summer of 1969 Trent Taylor The summers of the 1960s were dominated by The Beatles, Jimi HenWar. In 1969, the cultural event that was the Summer of Love was still strongly remembered from two years past, but the summer of 1969 was to be dominated by its own major events. Where the Summer of Love was remembered fondly in the United States of America (USA) from San Francisco to New York, the events that unfolded in 1969 would be remembered broadly throughout the world, leaving a lasting cultural impact on the USA and the world as a whole. The world looked on as the counterculture generation amassed in the three-day event that was the history. Across the country in California, the Manson Family committed seven murders under the direction of Charles Manson to achieve the race-war goals he envisioned step on alien soil when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon as a part of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. In three months, the summer of 1969 produced three major events that impacted society and culture in the United States and the world.

While summertime generally involves trips to the beach, picnics in the park, visits to local pools and other outdoor activities in the local community, the midsummer of 1969 involved a focus on somewhere much further from home. On July 16th, after years of development and technological innovation, NASA launched its crewed Apollo 11 mission where to walk on the moon’s surface. Filmed and displayed for audiences back home, the moon landing became one of the most-watched broadcasts in

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the 1960s, with many countries watching the live broadcast in the middle all over the globe, the Apollo 11 mission and subsequent moonwalk also left lasting cultural and societal impacts that continue to permeate pop culture, art, fashion, literature and more. The moon landing provided a culmination of imaginings of the moon and created an intersection While scientists had targeted the moon as a goal of exploration, art had features its share of hostilities in space, while Pink Floyd’s encroaches themes of madness, illustrating how many in society viewed the moon from our point on Earth. The moon landing would both relieve some of these anxieties over humanity’s other thinkers.

Placing a man on the moon changed humanity’s perception of what could be accomplished through technological means. In 1954, Bart Howard’s song Fly Me to the Moon was a tale of whimsical romantic fancy.

A little over a decade later it was a very real feat, accomplished through ing interest in moon exploration when he created his 1964 ‘Moon Girl’ line. Like other fashion designers of the period, Courrègas celebrated and fashion.1 The emergence of moon-centric language, art, and literature began to emerge.The moonwalk ‘underscored the way in which the success of Apollo 11 had permanently altered the public’s sense of what a group of humans… was capable of accomplishing.’2 For the USA in particular, the success of Apollo 11 ‘heightened a sense of national pride’3 for having beaten the Soviet Union in the long-standing space race. In many ways, the moon was no longer synonymous with only themes of However, not all Americans were convinced by these 1 2 3 74

Hyland 2016.

Chaikin 2007.

Chaikin 2007.

themes of unity and nationalism; African-American activist and writer Eldridge Cleaver argued that the 4 which served only to distract the USA from internal issues, such as the poverty and marginalisation that Black Americans experienced. This standpoint prompted Gil Scott-Heron to compose the poem highlighting issues closer to home like medical debt while Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon.5 This poem the use of government funds on the space race, while ignoring internal 6

Themes of division and unrest would continue to permeate the summer of 1969 when, only several weeks after the moonwalk, seven Americans were killed over two nights in early August. The investigation would lead police to the Manson Family, a cult led by criminal Charles Manson. He perceived himself as a type of guru of the Family, taken were members of the hippie and counterculture movements of the 1960s, which had been seen in new heights during the Summer of Love in 1967.

Manson used a signature hippie location from the Summer of Love to establish himself as a cult leader, drawing people to him with his seemingly prophetic teachings. Manson’s followers believed themselves to be reincarnations of the original Christians, primarily against the establishment which they saw as the new Romans. After moving to a commune on a ranch, Manson eventually came to convince some members of his family to commit murder on his behalf This culminated in the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others on the night of August 9th, followed by two others the next evening. While not personally involved with any of the murders, Charles Manson was sent to prison where he died of old age.

The Manson Murders became the focus of the nation during the summer of 1969, with the Tate murders horrifying citizens of the USA. The subsequent trial of Manson and the other members involved in the 4 5 6

Baram 2014, 75.

Baram 2014, 73.

Loyd 2015.

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murders endured for more than nine months, making it the longest trial in American history at the time of occurrence. Just as some weeks before the moonwalk had been one of the most televised moments in history, the Manson trial became one of the most publicised criminal cases in American history. Whilst the family members that committed these murders may not have inherited Manson’s notoriety, Charles Manson himself had a wide cultural impact, grounding himself as a notorious part of Ameri-

the Manson Murders, titled after Manson’s ‘Helter Skelter’ philosophy. This philosophy was garnered from The Beatles’ , which Manson thought to be speaking directly to his Family, foretelling a coming race-war in America.7 Heavily involved in music, Manson himself wrote several songs which have gone on to be covered by various artists in the decades since his arrest and rise to infamy. Other artists have drawn upon Manson’s fame, with American shock-rocker Marilyn Manson deriving his stage name from two iconic members of the 1960s, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. The cultural impact of Manson can also be seen in which used the summer of 1969 as a backdrop for its narrative.

Still considered one of the most controversial and infamous criminals of the century, Manson created an enduring legacy and cultural impact over several days in the summertime of ‘69.

The 1960s in the USA, alongside the historical moon landing and the confronting horrors of the Manson Family murders, was also the setting for a number of other social issues within the USA. As depicted in Gil Scott-Heron’s the USA’s 1960s was home to a groundswell of social issues, many of which wereignored by a hyper-fothe media focused on the Manson Murders, the Civil Rights Movement, can-Americansregarding disenfranchisement, racial segregation and continuing racism.. Compounded by this movement and the anti-militarism, anti-establishment sentiments that were growing, the counterculture movement of the 1960s emerged. Described as ‘fundamentally a cultural 7 76

Watson 2012.

rather than a political protest,’8 the counterculture movement advocated for equal rights for African-Americans and protested the USA’s presence new culture allowed new forms of expressionism through music and art, as well as lifestyle changes as fashion, hairstyles and perspectives began to shift, alongside a growing drug culture. The criminal status of drugs such as marijuana led to a subculture in which drug use exploded across America, particularly on college campuses, with a report at the time statwidespread on the American campus’.9 Whilst some of the largest movements occurred within the counterculture of the USA , the movement also existed in Western Europe, with the ‘hippie’ subculture of the USA linked to the Underground movement in the United Kingdom.

The counterculture movement in the USA found a pivotal and Held on a dairy farm in New York, the three-day festival was advertised as ‘3 days of peace & music,’10 and garnered a turnout of 400,000 attendees.11 Featuring acts such as Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Janis the music scene of the decade, launching the careers of many other artists. It additionally went on to achieve even more attention and commercial success through the development of the 1970 documentary on the event, that ‘turned Woodstock into the enduring myth that it later became. So many people think they were at Woodstock, but they really only saw the movie,’12 the culture of not only the attending generation, but for generations to follow as well. The importance of Woodstock came not only from the artists that performed there, but from the backdrop of social upheaval counterculture movement, providing a counternarrative to the violence, 8 9 10 11 12

Hirsch 1993, 419.

Freedman 1996, 125.

Korr 2019.

Korr 2019.

Wattenberg 1994.

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neglect and political discourse that permeated the USA at the time. With the terror of the Manson murders only occurring several weeks beforehand, Woodstock revealed that a massive amount of people could come together and coexist within the same sphere of ‘peace & music.’ While attempts to recapture the seeming magic of Woodstock have been rather and world history. However, in some ways the festival represented both the pinnacle and ending of the counterculture movement. Woodstock’s to the counterculture youth, to great success, and thus undermining their values of anti-materialism.

The USA saw the rise of three major events which captured the imaginations of the world. Against a backdrop of tense politics, violence, revealed both the strength and failings of society. The moonwalk and Woodstock provided a sense of bonding, nationalism and general sense of achievement, while the Manson murders revealed the violent side of humanity. Regardless of their positive or negative impacts, these three major events in the summer of 1969 had long-standing cultural impacts, not only in the USA but across the world. Science, counterculture, art, literature, music and more were all changed by the events of ’69.Well events that took place in the summertime of 1969.

References Baram, Marcus (2014). Gil-Scott Heron: Pieces of a Man. New York: St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

Chaikin, Andrew (2007). Live from the Moon: the Societal Impact of Apollo. In History Division.

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Freedman, Mervin B and Harvey Powelson (2010). Drugs on Campus: Turned on & Turned Out. The Nation, 8 December. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/ drugs-campus-turned-tuned-out/.

Hirsch, Eric D (1993). The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Boston: Houghton

8 January. https://www.thecut.com/2016/01/andre-courreges-obituary.html.

Korr, Kenneth S (2019). Woodstock, a festival of peace, music and providing medical care. Rhode Island Medical Journal 102(6): 11–12.

Loyd, Jenna M (2015). ‘Whitey on the Moon’: Space, Race, and the Crisis of Black Mobility. In Liz Montegary and Melissa A White, eds. Mobile Desires: The Politics and Erotics of Mobility Justice, 41–52. London: Palgrave Pivot.

Watson, Charles (2012). Manson’s Right Hand Man Speaks Out. Abounding Love Publishers.

Wattenberg, Ben (1994). Did Woodstock change America?. Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg. https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript119.html#TOP.

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Inside My Room James Ramsay

about her. Still, when he sent her the message, ‘ten mins away xx’, that bly nausea. She hoped he would not mind how cramped and boring her room could look, from certain angles, to certain boys; how dank and cold it was from the torrential rain outside. She remembered that no, he was weird, and awkward, and she didn’t even like him that much. She prayed for some higher intervention: make his car break down, block roadways, send through a hurricane… anything. This boy should not see her bedroom. She had lit jasmine incense because he told her jasmines were his All at once, there he was, in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of her bed. With his entrance, he brought in the coldness of the rain, which creases into his face, and his hair was so greasy. She watched him pick at her tattered bedsheets and brainstormed ways to make him leave, then ways to make him stay, then ways to make him leave.

Shit! Those ugly little ants had slipped through the window. , he noticed immediately. Cold sweat and fear shot up her spine, and more fear at how fearful she was. The sky rolled over into night, dragging been caught out, exposed. His voice broke clumsily as he said, ‘Y’know ants are really strong. They can carry ten times their weight.’

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face, which lifted into a wonky (pretty) smile, as he let ants crawl over his

yellow glow that stretched into every corner of the room, every corner of a sigh of warmth that sunk into the walls; sunk into their chests, and lethargy that made her pull out her sketch pads and show him her drawings. And it made him show her the songs he’d written. Rain beat down on the roof, and ants crawled. They watched each other, feeling more and more and more at home.

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The Makeshift Bookmark Mo Giddy In battered, bent, ripped Copies of novels Scavenged from perches on sidewalks and garden walls From street book exchanges Stealthily stolen like a Jenga block Always of a precise measure of value; Not important enough to be an incredible loss If lost Yet important enough to lose one’s place in a world If lost Early morning train tickets, The cheap kind.

Receipts for groceries, A torn morsel of soft pink tissue paper.

Postcards from aunties Even The abhorrent The shamed The guilty last resort The dog ear.

A permanent mark of rest The Comma of bookmarks, Decided self-removal in the face of over-excitement, Boredom, Interruption.

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One must surely abide by the dog ear of previous owners It is as important as a chapter’s end.

It is surely as telling of the story, Itself.

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Spinning Hannah Roux mine and the rhythm of the tide, of white shells, spinning (split strands together), of ocean-water – best friends, good ends, the other things, in rings and rings – like until that some-day ends – but when? – and then? – and is it time? to get back to that beach again, to see those spinning sands again, to hold that panting tide again?

When I was sixteen, I said (they said) girls sometimes feel until the some-day ends, then— crash and roar, ocean’s withdraw, spinning the white shells high, into the wave’s embrace, I saw her bright face drawn up to the beach again, but said (they said) I like him better, anyway like him like that – ocean-water and did and did like him , liked his black eyes, like burning coals, like carbuncles kept deep, in dark coracles, beached high to bring, the soul to spring, the wizard’s luck, the wedding rings, like magnet stones, like white-shell-bones, like lode-stones – pulling in my eyes like moon-bright river-stones.

When I was eighteen, they said (I said) you’re older then, your eyes are carbuncle-red, your tears are – all spent on wedding rings and bed, and tide – moves other things (they said). But tide (ignoring what they said)

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My eyes drown in the coming rain, drawn in into the crash of blood, under the wheels again — the coming train, another magnet-stone, another lode-stone spin in water – spinning, , again, like that train, like that rain, promising annihilation (but not getting any), promising the ocean – drawn in on that red tide again, on graphite lines again, over those train tracks again, under those wheels again, into that heart of light, again.

When I was twenty, suddenly, I remembered, passably, on that white beach, in that white sea, those years ago, her hands on me, in graphite ocean, in strong lines again, that spin – that compass-stone, that white shell bone – and her hands hot on hips of stone.

Will I feel again? soon and then, stone melts and runs — it comes – the pull of hair like moon again, the groan of deck on beach again, black eyes on mine, the pull again of stone that spins ( , again), the sand on keel ( , again), the boat that pulls (me home again), the ocean’s dance, (felt ), felt in the heart – the tide and touch of hands, again.

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86 Poetry

| Thomas Sargeant

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| Thomas Sargeant

11:30am the Caffeine Barricade Nico Smith

he uses a new mug.

Emails are composed, while mugs accumulate like No Man’s Land.

Two-thirds a teaspoon of granules, a splash of milk, boiling water and stir.

The top secret recipe, learnt when I was ten years old that breaches No Man’s Land, to overcome the enemy and make contact with the hostage.

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Euphoria Allen Chan Let our hearts stack Like bodies in a grave.

Smearing our casualties on railway Tracks so far from mind Central.

These ecliptic lines intersect At Euphoria.

Our dancing limbs Are on display at the Met. The binding of two Embalmed in sculpture.

Let our clothes be laid out for Forensic teams to deem the consequences of loving too much.

Shall we risk a little death?

Have we come too late for the prologue of our scene?

Let our performance be A recurrence of broken things coming to symphony, shaping instruments from the space between our chests.

Let the temperature run down our throats and measure how much air still remains within our lungs.

Pull our ascent, driving stakes

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towards our peaks.

Will we risk a little death?

Let us miss the mark with our arrows so we can delay our arrival and labour hungrily for perfection. let our tumbling bedsheets denote how far the sky has fallen to frame our bodies a warning of receiving our inheritance too soon, let this love draw us towards the heat like blind babes, Where priestly men eulogize - only gods could treat our

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Afterword When thinking of the past year, certain words are bound to come to time, but this journal, its writers, artists, editors, and creators prove otherwise.

ARNA 2021 represents the culmination of emotions, experiences and attitudes that have emerged over the previous twelve months. The year within an unprecedented time. This journal, in many ways, reveals the power and importance of publications like ARNA that give a platform to share a multitude of experiences and emotions. Complexity, confusion, loss, love and a host of other feelings are expressed in this year’s edition, and this collection of pieces stands as a gathering place in which we can all share in our complicated experience of humanity.

Overwhelmingly, this edition reveals the creative power of memory. Frozen within these pages, you will have found snapshots of time; sweet and bitter, joyous and jolting, peaceful and provocative. While social issues surrounding politics, race, gender, mental health, and sexuality ground this journal in recent reality, words of love for both the telling of stories and each other create the unmissable sensation of timelessness. We hope you look at this journal the same way; as a mark of what has been, what the past year has brought, and what has yet to come. of the Publication Directors, editors, and its contributors. Alongside the you, the reader, who makes this journal come to life. We thank everyone who has invested their time into this journal and hope you have found enjoyment, empathy, provocation, and memory within these pages.

Angela Xu and Trent Taylor General Editors ARNA 2021

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About the Editors Jenna Lorge is a fourth-year Media & Communications and Gender Studies student. In 2020 she was the Editor-in-Chief for both and , and has loved the opportunity to showcase the incredible student was the best she’s ever had; Thomas Isarel is a fourth-year student studying Secondary Education (English + Ancient History). He was published in , and an editor in both and . In co-directing this year, he has loved featuring the passion and hard work of students. He exclusively plays as Scarlet in Cluedo, Peach in MarioKart, and Jade in Mortal Kombat. You get the vibe.

Angela Xu is a second year Law/Arts student majoring in History who has written and edited for a number of publications. She’s obsessed with dogs, hates raisins with a burning passion and thinks almost exclusively in puns and out-of-date Friends references.

Trent Taylor is currently studying a Master of Teaching with a Bachelors in English and History. He has submitted to SASS in the past, and has loved the opportunity to step into this role and amplify student voices. the Chau Chuk Wing Museum.

Alex Robinson Heritage Studies. She curated the incredible visual submissions for and immersive works. Alex is an introvert until it comes to petting other people’s dogs, and unapologetically laughs at bad jokes.

Kate Scott is a fourth-year Politics, International Relations, and History student. She has written, illustrated and edited for several publications including and the . She ascribes way too much personal worth to keeping her plants alive.

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Grace Hu is a seconnd year Arts/Law student of indeterminate major.

After an actual eternity of just writing, she was keen to check out and edit other people’s work in ! She is a bit stubborn and does accents around the house a lot. Brooklyn, Glaswegian, Lanarkshire … the quality is alright.

Margaret Li is a second year Arts Law student. Since voluntarily proof checking her peers’ essays in high school, she has been passionately involved in the editing world, working with several publications, including the wonderful .

Sally Chik is a poet published in and She has been lead poetry editor of two inaugural journal publications from the Sydney Arts Student Society last year and . She has a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Hons) and Master of Information Studies. She is currently working in the University Library and she likes to wear hats.

Alexander Back is somewhere in the late stages of an arts degree, getting ready for honours, an MTeach or a cup of tea and a long nap. He written word.

Ezara Norton is a third year Bachelor of Arts student majoring in English and Marketing. Her passions are creating theatre and obsessing over Phoebe Bridgers’ lyrics,but she has equally enjoyed becoming infatuated with the words of our contributors.

Iris Yuan is a second-year student majoring in Media & Communicaever, she’s published work before with SASS’s the experience in her editorial role this year.

and has loved using

Justine Hu is a second year Media/Law student, with a background designing various publications. When not working on amazing publications like , she can be found visiting galleries, at karaoke, and with a new hair colour.

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Kat Porritt-Fraser is a third-year Gender Studies and English student use.

Kowther Qashou Human Rights. She has previously written for and edited a number of publications, including and various autonomous editions of TikTok. Loren Chakerian entering her fourth year of Laws. Having chosen not to pursue English in her formal education, she’s joined to keep herself immersed in the spirit of the written word.

Rhea Thomas is a fourth-year Media and Communications and Music good bowl of ramen.

Trinity Kim is a second-year International Relations and Nursing student and would like a break from health research papers. She gets excited by anyone who has a story and dog photos to share. When she isn’t completing sudokus, she’s creating yet another obscure spotify playlist.

Zara Zadro is a third year Media and Communications and English USYD and UTS publications.

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About the Contributors Hannah Roux is usually personal, often formal and metric, but sometimes in protest bring fairy-tales to bear on modern issues, and Rosemary Dobson. When One of the key themes of her writing in the last few years has been her attempts at reconciling her Christian faith with her sexuality.

Amy Tan

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poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ on a random tumblr post and to date it is still one of her favourite poems. She takes inspiration from his short yet complete style of writing and imagery and hopes to continue to write, build and experiment with words.

Kate Woodbury of creative drive. It’s an out-of-body experience, most of the time. It’s frustrating and painstaking, all of the time. She has a penchant for using obnoxiously long titles, and romanticising mundanity.

Saranya Agar is an Australian-Indian writer, currently in second year, studying English and Film Studies. In her writing, she seeks to observe probably attempt to turn you into a character at some point.

Sally Chik is a writer with experience in corporate and creative writing.

Her poems have been included in . She has also been lead poetry editor of two inaugural journal publications from the Sydney Arts Student Society and .

She has a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Hons) and Master of Information Studies. She is currently working in the University of Sydney Library and she loves to drink tea.

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Ibrahim Khan is a law and economics student exploring everyday chaand reading Russian novels in the serene parks of the Inner West.

Riley Treisman was book-mad before she could speak. Her love of creative writing began at the age of four, when she started making tiny fantasy books from folded bits of paper. She plays piano and drums, sings in the University’s A Cappella Society, writes original songs and watches too many Instagram Reels in her spare time. Riley believes everyone is Caitlin Marinelli grew up in Sydney, Australia and has always had a keen interest in literatures ability to convey memory and the solitude of tive and sense of time found in the modernist works of Katherine Mander and sexuality. Above all, she is interested in capturing the mundanity of everyday life and the subjective importance of moments of epiphany.

Through inspiration from her own childhood, she strives to write relatable, nostalgic stories that resonate with experiences of alienation.

Emma Murphy graduated from UNSW with a degree in English literature and creative writing. She’s just started her Masters of Publishing and hopes to work in a trade publishing house someday! As much as she likes to read, she also loves to write and hope to see some of her work on a bookshelf one day.

Nathan Tran is an INFJ, and he’s not an arts student and never had the courage to pursue writing. It was always something he just did for fun or to cope with personal struggles. He always try to make his writing unique by incorporating unique facts, phenomena, science or mythology. Poets he likes include Jared Singer, Sarah Kay, RJ walker and Neil Hilborn.

His artistic philosophy is to try and bring, comfort, happiness or growth through the stories he tells, and he hopes by sharing this he can help at least one person.

William Duke describes their work as drawn towards the Gothic, dark,

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fantastical, and medieval, especially when it intersects with notions of gender and queerness. He believes scholarship should strive to be daring, fun, and always emotionally intelligent - a project he wishes to hopefully be a very small part of.

Ava Maree Lansley believes anonymous writing is an outlet for us to reveal parts of ourselves which would otherwise be hidden, to upkeep appearances within the social sphere. Through her poetry, she hopes to to look to with curiosity.

Nishta Gupta is a visual artist in their second year of university. Although they have worked primarily within photography and video, they love to experiment with mediums including painting, drawing, and most recently, sculpture. They have a particular interest in the body within intersecting political identities including race and gender. The female and world, and in ‘Fold’ they invite an intimate look at their own body as it stretches in physical and abstract ways.

Kudzaishe Laura Khuleya is a Southern African raised female who started writing as a way to cope with continual trauma. She is predomitrauma and associated mental illnesses.

Angela Leech describes their work as this: Pushing back against the dominant cultural mythology and romanticisation of a ‘White Christmas’, my short story ‘Honey’ was inspired by summertime Christmases.

Depicting a suburban childhood, this piece sought to pull focus onto small moments, often overlooked.

Karen Leong mainly involve hong kong, women of colour, and her lived experience in straddling both - plucking inspiration from reclamation and desire. She has been featured on and

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. In her spare time, she scrapbooks, performs, and waxes poetic and focusing on the little things.

Neve Peters is a third year arts student studying languages and international relations. Having idolised Katniss Everdeen as a tween, she possesses a love of nature, a highly strung disposition, and raging feminism, all of which can usually be found somewhere in her writing. Although she hails from the country’s fashion capital, Neve looking forward to a world where it is acceptable to wear runners and jeans.

Sara Hollie an alien-human hybrid who currently dwells on planet Earth (mostly).

Poetry helps keep her Earth-bound, and she is currently in the process of Trent Taylor has studied History and English, and dabbles in writing and writing essays about various social movements and historiography, his preferences fall heavily on writing about medieval literature and history.

James Ramsay ences in life, so they inevitably bleed into their works’ conceptual focuses.

Mo Giddy Gothics.

Thomas Sargeant often carries a camera with him in his dreams and in a wide range of formats to express a quiet appreciation for the love and joy he sees in the world. He is in his third year of Art History and Tillmans, Robert Mapplethorpe, ane Jenny Holzer.

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Nico Smith is a former dancer who is studying English and works as a freelance journalist. She is inspired by the detail in the every day.

Allen Chan describes their work as this: Few words that describe, sitting on airy shoulders, sneeze in time and guise.

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Kate Scott, and all the Publication Directors that came before us, for their wisdom and assistance in shaping this journal into what it is today; Nicole Baxter, Emily Kardum and Aiden Cheney for all their support; All the students that have shared their talent with us; and of course, The University of Sydney Union The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The Sydney Arts Students Society The Sydney University Press

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