Above Water 2016

ABOVE WATER creative writing anthology volume 12, 2016

credits Editorial Committee Danielle Bagnato, Sebastian Dodds, Joshua Lynzaat, Baya Ou Yang, Jean Tong and Caleb Triscari Editorial Assistant Dzenana Vucic Judging Committee Candy Bowers, Sam Cooney and Jessica Yu Grand Prize (Graphics) Anna Theris Grand Prize (Written) Lucas Grainger-Brown Runners Up (Written) Tzeyi Koay and Ang Remus Internal Illustrations Edie M Bush, Amie Green, Anwyn Hocking, Sam Nelson, Anais Poussin, Natalie Seiler and Aisha Trambas Design Danielle Bagnato, Sebastian Dodds, Baya Ou Yang and Caleb Triscari with thanks To Candy Bowers, Sam Cooney and Jessica Yu for giving their time freely to the consideration of our shortlist. To Dzenana Vucic for her dedicated help in blinding and sorting submissions. To Anna Theris for captivating us with her gorgeous initial submission and cover art.

To Edie M Bush, Amie Green, Anwyn Hocking, Sam Nelson, Anais Poussin, Natalie Seiler and Aisha Trambas for their beautiful internal illustations. To Nigel Quirk and Printgraphics for always making the print process as smooth and enjoyable as possible. And finally, to each and every person who submitted their work to Above Water this year. It was the incredible quality of your work that made the shortlisting process so challenging and rewarding.

ABOVE WATER VOLUME 12, 2016

Above Water is the annual creative writing anthology produced by the Creative Arts and Media Departments of the University of Melbourne Student Union. Above Water is open to all current University of Melbourne students. The editorial committee blindly read all submissions and decided on a shortlist of pieces. This shortlist was then sent to judges Candy Bowers, Sam Cooney and Jessica Yu who determined the prize winners of this year’s anthology. Š 2016 University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). Published by the General Secretary of UMSU, James Bashford. The copyright of materials published in Above Water remains with the individual writers and artists and shall not be reproduced without their permission. The Media and Creative Arts Departments of UMSU reserve the right to republish these works in any format. ISSN 1833-8879.

contents 4

this is a story about waking up

8

a river

13

she stepped on a puddle

16

catch the shadow

22

dorris

24

the 903

28

she has lived here her whole life

30

talking with a blindfold on

34

rooftop romance, and, hesitation

37

limos . emaciate

39

spacex and the numinous

45

the window

48

still life paintings and finding bits of art in the kitchen fruit bowl

50

love

55

morning, not going as planned

56

crocodile tears

59

first person singulars pretending at plurality

THIS IS A STORY ABOUT WAKING UP DZENANA VUCIC with art by anais poussin

Sullen daylight and petrichor seep through a window grimy with half-told stories and the smell of sleeping.

We are cocooned in a world of greys; shifting light; and the tattoo of rain against smoke-stained glass.

The air (thick, viscous) reeks of alcohol.

Sex. (And bodies.)

It invades my nostrils, Pushing clumsy hands into my lungs Fistfuls.

Poison and deliverance.

Oxygen drawn in.

Drawn down.

Gas exchange in the pulmonary alveoli.

4

Passive diffusion, and the release of carbon dioxide.

Heady.

And disorientating.

I lie in suspended animation – paralysed and apprehensive of waking.

I lie curled – (a foetus in utero) against your back, my body speckled with goose bumps, though, I am not cold.

Your back rises and falls against mine.

A movement, primal and honest and exposed (Every inhale, a gasp, and every exhale, a whimper) I am haunted by your vulnerability.

My vertebrae press against yours and our bones lock and slip

and grind,

pinching skin and nerves in the process; and relentlessly searching for the jigsaw-perfect fit.

5

You shift and I shift.

Roll over and supress a groan.

My equilibrium lost; the world swims in and out of focus.

Drunk on vertigo.

Good morning.

Your voice is the amalgam of half-sleep and maybe regrets.

Fissures in tenor run parallel to weighted, considered words.

You want to sound casual, but you come across bored.

You taste like whiskey and smell like bad decisions.

But I am lethargic for sex and embarrassed of my anonymity and I have no answers for you.

(Instead) we talk about souls.

You trace mandalas into the curve of my shoulder and I play noughts and crosses over your stomach.

I am reclined in the ‘V’ of your arm and can hear your heartbeat, and feel your lungs

expand 6

and

deflate.

this is a story about waking up

You speak into my hair.

I try to explain that sub-atomically, you never end and I never begin and we

fade

into and becomeeachother.

And maybe that’s what love is; when you stop resisting and let your atoms abandon you (for someone else).

But I don’t believe in love.

Dappled sunlight plays hide and seek over half naked bodies in yingyanged surrender.

Eating our heartbeats and our breaths.

But I can hear the flicker of shadows on the walls.

(In the stillness, the sound is a hurricane.)

And; muted, we lie in the hazy aftermath of our hangovers and watch the air vibrate between our skins and think about all the atoms that we lost

in hand shakes and kisses with strangers.

7

A RIVER MORGAN-LEE SNELL with art by anwyn hocking

T

he night closes in, and a green rushing river stretches dark and infinite through the living room. It winds its way in from the back door, through the bedroom, weaves between kitchen chairs and then twists out the bathroom window, off into an unfamiliar city scape. They say there are massive ships sunk in there never to be recovered. It is far, far deeper than any river should be. Her chair sinks into mossy carpet as she fingers the pleats of her buttery yellow dress. A television casts flickering blue light across the room. Catching on rippling water, it glints back at her like indigo stars, forming new constellations. She peels her thighs from the sweaty leather and makes her way to the river’s edge, kneeling down to inspect reflected galaxies. Deep below the surface, phantom lights travel away from her. She reaches out a hand and lets icy water run through her fingers. She wonders if there are any sweet potatoes left.

Five years old, she sits in a porcelain tub with brassy lion’s feet. Plants hang from the ceiling, sprout from ceramic pots on the windowsill. Black hair snakes down her bare back. She is sticking foam letters and animals to the side of the bath while her father washes her hair, big fingers weaving across her scalp. Soap suds 8

drip down her temple and into her ear and she can hear the quiet pop, pop, pop as they burst by her lobe.

A cellphone lights up blue on the edge of the sink, vibrates onto the floor. He clicks his tongue and shakes shampoo from his hands. Bending over to retrieve the phone, he presses the little button to accept the call.

‘Hello?’

He walks out.

In the tub, she lays back. She submerges herself with a satisfying whulp.

Holding her nose, she pictures herself from above: flickering face and pointed nipples. A wavering brown scab on her knee.

She turns pruney.

On a peachy tile, just below the window, a crack forks outwards. Water dribbles down dirty grout, spilling onto the floor.

She presses her weight against the knife and it falls through the vegetable, meeting the chopping board with a thud. With a fork, she stabs each half four times before setting them in the microwave. Radiation whirs and she watches the little neon numbers count down. The microwave beeps at her and she removes the orange halves, scooping out steaming flesh. The gritty skins detract from the sugary mush, and so she discards them, throwing them into the river. The halves make two little boats travelling the old shipping lanes, floating out towards the bright city lights. People queue by the windowsill, waiting to board.

Picking at her dinner, she shuffles across the three-seater couch that balances tentatively on either side of the river, a makeshift bridge. She takes her place at the dinner table, chewing in time with the clicks of the grandfather clock.

Seven years old, she sits patiently by the door, watching the old clock as it ticks in slow circles. The hands keep spinning, like water down a drain. An hour chimes by before the phone rings.

‘Hey darlin’, it’s Daddy. I’m running a little late, you might have to make yourself dinner tonight, Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Great. Love you, bye.’

She kisses the receiver but he has already hung up. Just fuzz and dial tone.

In the kitchen, she finds a stale bag of corn chips and a can of lentils past their use-by date. In the back of the cupboard, barely recognisable, lies a sweet potato overgrown with purple roots. A creek burbles out from under the bathroom door, twisting by.

9

A bang reverberates through the house and she dashes to the front door to see her father, giggling at his little leather briefcase, breathing overexcited hellos.

‘Hey hun,’ he says, looking past her, over her head into the living room. She is struck shy. He sets down his work things and heads towards his study. From the doorframe, she scans the landscape, spots her mother. Scampering across the sofa, she plants herself at her mother’s feet and clings hungrily to her leg. She tugs at the hem of her skirt.

‘Your father is a busy man,’ her mother says.

Water slurps at the river bank.

Moonbeams curl around her face, eyelashes of light brushing against her cheek.

She sits at the docks, her toes dangling just above the surface. The river offers up its lung-seizing freshness. Upstairs, she can hear a shower turning on. She stands and slips her dripping feet into canvas shoes. Navigating through the crowds, she makes her way back to the living room and climbs the stairs, damp green underfoot. In the ensuite, wrapped in a sun-bleached towel, her mother hunches on the edge of the tub.

Her mother stands behind him, head swathed in lilac terrycloth.

‘Please don’t do this.’

He stuffs a plaid shirt into a sports bag before moving to the ensuite, ignoring her.

‘Just talk to me.’

Silently, he opens the top drawer, taking out a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream. He slams it shut. The bang can be heard even over the roar of the river.

‘Where will you go?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he mumbles, walking back into the bedroom.

He pulls a volume of D.H. Lawrence off the shelves.

‘Just stay.’

He rifles through the sock drawer.

She lowers herself onto the bed, one hand holding steady the towel wrapped around her head.

‘Please stay.’

He sits on his side of the bed.

‘Why?’ He asks.

She looks down at her hands.

Flanked on either side by purple sheets, the river flows between them.

10

a river

Through the steam, she can barely see her mother. She captures an occasional glance – an arm or a shoulder visible through the haze. But it happens too fast, flesh disappearing right back into the fog again. In the shower, her mother curls into herself, ribs breaking inwards like spiders’ legs. The water carves itself into her, peeling back her skin and whittling away at her bones. The girl watches the condensation rise as her mother crumbles apart and slips down the drain once and for all, dissolved.

She saves what is left of her mother – a porcelain pill box and a jam jar full of tears and a stamp book full of bruised under eyes (all the sleepless nights after he left). She stores these alongside a floral-papered book filled with black and white photographs. Stuck down with brown scotch tape that curls up at the edges are portraits of her family. A picture of her on a merry-go-round, mother holding her steady, father standing solid in the background. Parents draped in silk gowns and dark suits, painted with lipstick, hair scraped back and gelled. Her dressed in flannelette, crawling amongst the fabric at their feet. These things glow on the page, flickering in and out of focus like a broken television screen.

In a dream, they spend a summer in France. Three wide, leaning into each other on the park bench, mouths stained with corn syrup and artificial raspberry.

Wildflowers grow up their legs, drawing them closer together. The streets smell like cinnamon. Her mother wrapped in a yellow sundress, her father draped in linen, they float together in a smog of unnatural bliss.

Popsicles begin to melt. Red trails down her arm, sugar water leaking like bloodlines. Purple wildflowers stained with the hue of decay. Purple wildflowers drowned in crimson.

She wakes up, alone. The river still churns by outside her door. She tosses in the sheets. Her hands are sticky.

In the bathroom, she washes her hands with honey-scented soap. Rosy water twists down the drain. She hears the grandfather clock chiming from the living room. One, two, three, four, five. Five in the morning. The next boat leaves in three minutes. She takes her place atop the vessel, grabbing at thin air as she almost loses her balance. The cabin boy hands her a neon lifejacket and shows her to her seat. He has tan skin and tiny pink fingernails. She sits while he frees the boat from its place at the dock. The river laps at the sweet potato skin, smothering its underside with watery kisses. A soft breeze runs it fingers along the nape of her neck as they follow the river lights out the bathroom window. From up there 11

in the boat, she can see the entire city; a faded Hot Food sign and a metallic jellyfish sculpture and skyscraper windows all lit up. Streetlights dot the horizon like stars fallen to the earth. A fish swims by, flapping little grey fins. Beyond the city, the ocean splays out like a silk sheet, navy and silver, and beyond that, the sky is slowly coming around to the idea of a sunrise. The boat rocks gently back and forth, caressed by silken waves. A lighthouse in the distance guides them. They float over cities and forests and sunlight until they are eventually so far away that the sky swallows them whole. She becomes a star. The nearest anything is light years away.

12

SHE STEPPED ON A PUDDLE NICHOLAS KIRKBY with art by anwyn hocking

i am water bounded and unbounded by space you are not she who passes beneath this rippling this dissipating of alignment along a lighted void

you are the rippling and the ripples that such stirring of thought in your passing my sitting unbounds me into action

where with no water droplet do i claim kinship or feel you move in me 13

it is in this i resist its trapping and in insisting am trapped and in seeing myself am trapped and in seeing myself tied with no conception of wetness am

i let all pass through where ripples are stirring to your walking past

where once they moved in me for being beyond me now they lie still for being allowed without my allowing to move me

i see ripples but eyes are closed there is wetness but no water flow 14

15

CATCH THE SHADOW LUCAS GRAINGER-BROWN with art by edie m bush

B

ark gunshots ricochet from the bush. Shiny black divers’ heads hover beneath the surface of the weir. The search lines are widening, the spaces between warm bodies stretching.

Wrapped in a fluorescent blanket, the mother stands at the water’s edge.

Cutting a lonely figure beside a pale, mascara-ed police officer. Shiny black boots nervously shift beneath hands forcibly steadied around two cups of hot chocolate.

This lost vessel has an uncertain lifeline back to shore.

Another diver surfaces, shakes its alien head towards a supervisor on the adjacent bank. Still no sign.

Like everyone else, Michael’s desperate to slip away. The curiosity of running and shouting has died. They’ve faux-offered to help by being near: small country town charade of close-knit community and all that bullshit. Etiquette holds them rigid, impotent. Just like his sweaty cycling lycra, which is clamping his balls far too tight.

The policewoman’s phone vibrates a tune. Burst of John Farnham: he knows it before he hears; his childhood anticipates. We’ve got two strong hearts. She ducks toward the sound, flicks the screen, cradles her head into her palm. The silence screams. We stick together like the honey and the bee. Michael subconsciously power ballads. Johnny can’t be cut off, can’t go unsung.

He glances over his shoulder. Churning around the edges at the back of the group. The others are, by innocent body weight shifts, positioning themselves to slip away. That cheers him. Not much longer. No crime to fight here. No clear-cut wrong to right. Maybe writing to the local council for a better handrail. Not that Michael wants anything to do with government. But it’s a nice thought.

Dave the male nurse is one of the first to peel off. Clattering his carbon frame unapologetically over the gutter and crackling off down the gravel running track.

16

Dammit, Dave. A bit sorry to see Dave go. The bloody cat is, if he’s honest, his only other source of company. He sucks the mucous in his mouth and drops a wad into slimy grass.

With hands full of hot chocolate and her phone cuddled in her neck, mouth in motion, the policewoman turns round. Her eyes follow the stringy trail of spit up from the cicada skeletons in the grass to Michael’s wind-numbed face. They make eye contact. She sees an escape. The cardboard containers are thrust at him.

Fragmented apologies, vague gestures at the phone: she almost runs for it, back to the patrol car.

He had no time to respond. She was too quick. Might’ve done that before? And now he’s stranded in front of the beachhead, the space beside the victim. His first instinct is to sidle away, but no dice: everyone saw the mantle pass to him. Fuck.

No choice. He shuffles forward into the role. Dutiful, leaden, unable to think up a way out. Can’t say he blames the officer.

He’s not great with faces but he recognises the lady when he sees her up close.

She has a backwards-sloping brow, a pert nose. Without her work clothes she looks horribly – high school – young. He places her: the frozen yoghurt franchise.

He goes there when he hasn’t had enough beer to justify ice cream. (However, he read online that frozen yoghurt has more sugar than ice cream. The internet is ruining his life like that.)

‘Hi,’ he says, awkward as a farmer on a date. Calm down. You’ve talked to people before.

She looks at him sidelong. Nice brown eyes.

‘Sorry for your loss.’ Christ, what a wanker.

‘My baby ain’t lost.’

‘No—no—not lost.’ That sounds worse.

Jesus you’re stupid, no wonder you’ve got no friends.

Her mouth is probably the least nice part of her. Probably because she’s holding it in a grim line: he remembers fuller lips. Might be the cold though, they are a bit blue.

Jesus Christ Almighty, wake up Mick you asshole. Her kid is fucking gone. No wonder the cat pisses on your pillow.

He looks down at his incongruous feet. At a stalemate already. This might be a conversational record.

‘Sorry.’ Very sorry he asked, and very sorry he’s here talking to her. Where’s that damn police lady got to? Probably halfway down the freeway now, running as hard as those stumpy legs will let her.

‘Nothing to be sorry for.’ Fishing line stringing her words together. As in, when the line snags on a large gunk gloopy and you reel it in and find some dark creepy clay river sculpture on the end, embedded with bits of junk and glass and strange insect corpses. Hate those snags.

‘What’s it like making frozen yoghurt?’

Her warm brown eyes latch back onto him. Funny how people with warm brown eyes look welcoming even when they hate you.

17

‘You made me a frozen yoghurt one time – when I wanted one – one time. That shop in the high street. That’s you isn’t it?’

‘That’s me.’ She hesitates, and then gives up on whatever she was going to say.

A creepy uncertain feeling is spreading in his guts. They should’ve found something by now. Where’s the body? More importantly, what is this without the body?

Is it a wake, or, or, some sort of sick kool aid group hoping? Body bag lying deflated near the jetty. Just a garbage bag really. Covered in dew.

‘You have a footy team?’ He’s given up on closing his mouth; these words are coming out, unsettled and unsayable. The lactic acid from the ride has stopped pumping. It’s colonising his muscle fibres, corroding where it lands.

‘You, you…’ His brain has detached from its shaft like the rogue blade of a meat pulveriser in the dog food factory, whirring and bloody and it’ll take your fucking arm off. ‘You like frozen yoghurt?’

Of course she knows that her little boy got sucked into a storm water drain and was pinioned there until the bones bent and through he passed like cheese; grater.

The water seized him and massaged those little limbs kilometers downstream – into the next catchment, into the next township, and now her little boy’s a part of their ‘close-knit community’, sweat of their footy team and chary green of their OCD lawns.

She pretends not to hear anything he says.

What the fuck to say.

Of course the kid might’ve sunk. Just sunk into the mud at the deepest part of this place that feeds Michael’s new beige-hellhole-backwater-nightmare town, his third in four years. Could take months to find a trace.

A train howls in the distance, over near the station. The cycling gear cuts tight around his fat gut. When he moves his head and the bulge follows his spine against the lay of the land, so to speak. Coming into station now. He hates remembering his gut and loathes standing up straight with the gimp suit on, usually hunches over when he wheels the bike out the garage so it’s not the first thing people see.

Gunshots returning. There’s a minuscule chance the searchers have stumbled on a sprawled body that only reaches hip-high when standing. But what good’s that? Only a drier tragedy. Only one without the humiliation of water seeping in through her little boy’s nose and encasing the flesh of her flesh’s brain, dampening and loosening the skin. Only a neater corpse, with more humanity. But – The ground fog slips off the surface and rises as if the moment was preordained and he sees small black shapes in the water, blurred by an underwater cloud. The carp are breeding. The spawn floats past on the churn from the upriver runoff, reflecting the light like a chemical spill. Michael finally realises the full horror, the cruelty. The water where a precious little boy died is septic with fish semen.

Fish spawn – he can’t even. This mother needs a real person. Stupid, fat, greedy, stuffed in a body condom, fluid and frantic and sad. He shouldn’t be here.

He puts the two hot chocolates neatly side by side in the overgrown grass and runs wildly towards his pickup truck, starting like the hundred metres, his bike 18

catch the shadow

forgotten; skintight sodomy suit in full swing (what a sight for the pensioners on their slow motion Sunday morning walks).

Breathing like a dying racehorse, he makes it to the truck, fumbles the key from his crotch pocket. Drops his bundle.

Hands and knees in the gravel. Where the fuck – where the fuck’s – skittering along the top of the tiny stones – the keys. Finally finds the bastards right in front of his weak badger eyes. Pulls himself up, glass daggers falling from crevices, misses the lock, gouges a long fissure along the doorframe. Hasn’t done that in awhile. But third time lucky, into the warm of the cabin, gasping. The temperature change like grievous bodily harm but he doesn’t even – he rips the glove box open and tips mostly empty orange vials onto the passenger side floor. Knocks a handful of pills back, dry, and feels them echoing around his empty guts.

Feels better, feels less sure and a bit better. Good enough to drive, anyway.

Pulls out on the highway in a gentle roll, all his energy combusted. Hands loose on the wheel.

On the way back he lingers in the liquor aisle. He debates the cigarette counter.

But he makes it home in one piece with a six-pack of ginger beer. Skulls the acid bubbles in fast throat contractions on his back porch. The sun slides into a rusty funk. Lies down on the bed unmade. Gets up and drinks another ginger beer in his boxer shorts in the lounge room. Calls Carly, says little, calls his son, doesn’t cry. It’s warm enough inside to cry. Lies down on his bed again and watches the moon shimmy up like nothing happened, and nothing happens. Feels like he’s going to have an aneurysm.

Warm brown eyes open in the dark, black in the gloom, watching and watching forever and surrounded by inescapable filth. Fat fish are fucking in the weir. He flails to the kitchen and gulps down glass after glass of water to stave off another migraine, then comprehends where the water filling him up washed through.

Breaks another glass, runs out to the porch and throws up on the wicker chair.

Overgrown grasses wave zombie-like at him over the lip of pine planks.

He stares at the little orange translucent vial he keeps in the cupboard over the stove, neat and inviting, upright and yellow like summer dusk in the bare dusty cave. He stares it up and down and takes the lot, which if fine, totally fine, because you build up immunity (your insides slowly calcify, he read online, and you build up immunity to the harm you’re doing over time).

Michael drifts back to his pickup and fumbles the ignition. His fishing gear is all ready to go. He and father used to go down the trout farm and dip bait into writhing trenches, bring back a fat catch like heroes. The rods are always in his truck as a memento. Sometimes he dreams about rainbow trout, with all their 19

myriad colors, smoky and perfect on the barbeque or swimming lazily through an unclouded blue sky. Not like these bloody feral cocksucker carp.

The truck’s engine purrs confidently along the contours of the road. The sun hasn’t yet stirred. A few mad joggers are out before the first workday of the week.

Their paranoid, fleshless asses wink menacingly at him in the gloom.

Michael positions himself in the reeds and watches the shiny black fish backs slipping in and out of the starry mirror. Shouldn’t be breeding in the winter. The little ones will die off when they hatch. Stupid fuckers must think it’s springtime (he read online that this part of the country will be underwater in a couple of decades).

Michael takes his gloves off. The knuckles will go blue in this frost, he knows, but he can’t grasp the spool or thread the holes otherwise. The line is frail and permanently curled.

Why would a kid come playing out here, in the cold? Only fish screwing in an eerie disembodied way out here. Small bodies aren’t big enough, not strong enough, to create warmth enough to survive in winter.

He’s gone cold up to the calf. The hazard yellow blanket is hanging in the reeds like a windless flag, creaking in the hushed breeze.

She must have waited here all night, he figures, as he wades out past the shallows and the yellow canvas. Otherwise the emergency services would have asked her for the blanket back. So many countless bodies that need warmth to get through trauma.

He casts and snags a fat one, reels it in and holds it up, glistening, contorting in complex reptile panic. One flat eye stares into him: questioning, despairing. No human spark, not really a question at all just his projection of one. Do they even feel? He takes out the truncheon, stuns it. Softening up a steak he forgot to take out the freezer. Up to his hip. The truncheon splashes into the water. His two paw-like hands tear flesh from fragile bones.

A red blot of light is crouched on the horizon. He sees the carp scattering away from him, and it dawns that he just unthinkingly did something terrible. So cold it feels warm: liquid running around his thighs, his cock, lapping his half-moon gut. What a life he’s made, what a drifting, shitty person he’s become. Was he really going to kill them all?

He can see his unshaven face from below, in the dawn, looking up from the height of a child. He’d never catch them all anyway. Those mythological days are over. Fingers dripping fish eggs, he wades out further into the rancid pond.

The body must be out here somewhere. Maybe it’s under his feet, maybe it’s in the scales slathering off him. If only he could be a hero again, if only for a moment, if only for himself. Maybe he can bring the boy back home. Yes, he could do that.

Silt slides up from fetid depths where his feet fall as he searches, spreading a slick shadow across the mirror surface. The oil slick spreads and spreads along the shore in a chain reaction, the dirt bubbling across the pond, reaching out. Terror touches Michael through the groggy haze. If it gets out into the wider water, there will be no chance of finding the boy. No chance. He lets out a low, hateful wail.

20

catch the shadow

Don’t take this as well.

He leans over and throws his arms wide to smother the spreading shadow, to catch it before it reaches the depths, to turn it around. But it’s too big and too hard to grasp. It slips easily past him.

21

DORRIS CERA BROWN with art by sam nelson

The fifth blind opens just a crack Exposing tiny sprigs of mint, A candle, ashtray and a pack Of cards, a roller stuck with lint.

A flash of grey-black trousers as A man walks in, puts down his hat And switches on a track of jazz, As springs to view a dusky cat

Whose sharp meow the man ignores, Hand shaking as he lights a smoke, Impervious to playful claws – Mind fixed on savouring each toke.

He grasps a paper creased in thirds And smooths the crinkles with his glove His fingers lightly trace the words: – May 8th In Loving Memory Of 22

23

THE 903 MARY NTALIANIS with art by anwyn hocking

T

he man on the bus behind me was using the word fuck in all its variants.

‘Fuck this’ he said when the bus stopped at the corner of Kingsbury Drive and Mahady Road and didn’t start back up again for nearly ten minutes.

‘I need to take a fucking piss’ he muttered after the second set of green lights went red and we were still parked on the side of the road.

‘I don’t give a fuck’ he said into his phone after someone rang him to, presumably, chastise him for being late.

‘In-fucking-credible’ he said after hanging up the phone.

And upon exiting the bus a couple of kilometres down the road at Stacey Street, ‘Fuck you all you fucking fuckers’.

The bus stalled again. The man was taking a piss on the side of a building in full view of the bus and all its occupants. He emptied his bladder on the dirty concrete wall, pulled up his grass-stained jeans, leaving his fly undone, and flipped us off while disappearing down a street, all before the bus managed to get started again.

The 903 bus route starts at Ainsley station and finishes somewhere up north past the Lucky Shamrock Pub which is the furthest I’ve ever taken it. The pub has a five dollar parma on Tuesdays and they don’t shirk on the ham so it’s a pretty good deal.

Usually only the seniors get those sort of specials at other pubs during the week.

24

But we’re still only leaving Stacey Street which is twenty minutes down from the pub and full of all this graffiti on industrial type buildings and warehouses that I like to look at out the window.

Stazza Street Sluts is tagged on the corner of that building the guy on the bus was pissing on.

Bogerman is the biggest piece of graffiti and probably my favourite. It’s on the side of this old warehouse that used to be home to Dickson and sons machinery or something like that. It’s written pretty huge in these green and blue letters but this time I notice that someone has tagged Mikey is a fag over the edge of the a-n in black spray paint which sort of ruins it for me. I hate it when people use homophobic language like that.

The 903 bus is heading up past Wallis station now and a bunch of school kids get on but it’s only one o’clock in the afternoon so I reckon they’re probably wagging class.

‘Oi Jacko can I grab a dart off ya,’ one of the kids yells across the aisle.

‘We’re on a bus fuckwit, ya can’t smoke in here,’ his friend replies.

‘Suck me off.’

‘Shut up cunt.’

‘You cunts better stop acting like fucking ten year olds or they’re not gonna let us into the movie’ the third one says.

The kids get off the bus up the road near the Westfield.

I hate the Westfield. Especially in the middle of the day when it’s filled with stay at home mums and their crying babies. They always look super depressed and you can tell they haven’t had time to have a shower in the morning because their husbands left for their shitty construction jobs at like six o’clock in the morning and the kids were crying or pissing on the floor or drawing on the walls and the mum couldn’t even get in the shower for five minutes.

My favourite part of the 903 bus route though is the last stretch before the pub after the bus leaves the Westfield and drives up Warrigal Road. Not just because I know that in five minutes I’m gonna be walking into the Lucky Shamrock to order my parma but because there’s usually barely anyone else left on the bus. I notice a couple of old ladies in front of me but they’re getting off at the Lucky Shamrock too to play the pokies while eating cheap cold beef and gravy sandwiches and bragging about their grandchildren.

There’s always this one guy at the back of the bus too. He always puts his legs up on the seats and gets off after the Lucky Shamrock at those bus stops up north that might as well not exist because I can’t even imagine what they’d look like.

Maybe the 903 goes all the way up the mountains that I can just barely see from the window. Maybe there’s a stop right up the top of a mountain on a dirt road with trees on one side and a view of the whole entire city on the other. Maybe it goes all the way up over the mountain and stops down at the coast and there’s a bus stop right on the beach and there’s women in bathers and men with sunburn on their backs.

25

Now I’m kinda thinking I really wanna stay on the bus. See where it goes you know. Maybe I’ll get to go up the mountain like that time me and Emily drove up near Emerald Lake one weekend to camp but then it rained and I forgot how to put up a tent so we went home. Emily was my girlfriend in high school. My dad called me a dickhead for breaking up with her. He was probably right. She moved away right after graduation anyway and I heard she has a kid now.

Maybe I’ll get to see the beach. It’s been ages since I’ve been to the beach. My parents would take us there sometimes before my cousin Dave got locked up for growing mushies in the backyard and sold one to a kid at a music festival who ended up in a coma because he accidentally grew these really toxic ones. Before my sister Gina got married and moved up to Sydney with her Middle Eastern husband and converted or something like that. Before my dad had his stroke and was still allowed to drive. Before I got done for drink driving and lost my licence for 10 months so I have to take the bloody 903 to the pub.

I’m not one to make conversation but I feel like I really need to know how far the 903 goes. I turn around.

‘Hey mate how far does this bus go?’ I ask the guy sitting at the back with his legs up on the seat.

‘Just down the road,’ he says, ‘then turns around and comes right on back.’

‘Stop thirt-teen, The Lucky Shamrock,’ says the bus driver.

I get off the bus.

26

27

SHE HAS LIVED HERE HER WHOLE LIFE LOUISE CAIN

SHE HAS LIVED HERE HER WHOLE LIFE. her whole life in this sort of time anyway. the walls are peeling and they are dirty and she is always leaning on them and getting paint flakes in her hair. (they don’t wash out too easily) cold water comes out of the taps and into your lap and soap suds hang in the air (like raindrops would if the earth were turned upside down and change was spilling out of everyone’s pockets).

28

she keeps her coins in a china bowl by the door, with her keys that are never used. there’s a jacket over a chair; but no one ever notices any of these trinkets. they only ever notice, on first appearance, the HUGE – but how can you say that? after all we’ve vow to love and cherish forever and ever been out east by the river? it’s all so bloody boring out there you are, ten sixty change. do you want a receipt with that’s okay. everything will be okay. she can dance like anything and she is so lithe, so handsome! stuck in her flat looking out the window and through the walls. oh, if only she had – (what a funny thing to say!) the sun shines down from the ceiling on to stale coffee cups.

SHE HAS LIVED HERE FOR YEARS AND YEARS.

29

TALKING WITH A BLINDFOLD ON IRYNA BYELYAYEVA with art by aisha trambas

N

atasha bursts into my room with that expression on her face. Her wide eyes and pursed lips are telling me Ukraine is on her mind. It’s a mix of self-righteousness and horror. “What’s your nationality on Facebook?” I swivel my chair around lazily.

“What?” She isn’t supposed to know what Facebook is. My mother is the type of woman who yells at her phone when it autocorrects Slavic names to arbitrary English nouns.

“I don’t have one,” I finally answer her.

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t seem necessary to me to have any information about myself up there. I don’t have my birthday either.” I try to focus on my reading again; resenting the existence of whichever friend Natasha had been discussing politics with over the phone.

“Yes, but if you had to choose, what would it be?”

“Ukrainian.” I see her stance soften from my peripheral vision. She happily walks out of my room.

Does Ukraine have its own language then?

Yes. Is it close to Russian?

It’s closer to Polish.

So then... why do you speak Russian?

He looks down at my nametag as the receipt prints.

“Okay, you’ve got to tell me where that’s from. Finland? You look Finnish.” I smile politely (I’m paid for it).

“No, actually it’s Ukrainian.” His enthusiastic smile drops and his brows furrow like those of a man who clearly knows his way around international politics.

“The state of affairs there is terrible right now.”

30

My polite smile doesn’t falter.

“Yeah, it’s not the best.”

He looks shocked.

“No it’s not! It’s very, very bad!” He insists, taking his receipt and going.

It’s pouring rain outside so Natasha and I are watching the TV in our hotel room. The mother-daughter trip to Hanoi has been interrupted by non-stop news coverage of the riots in Kiev. They finally tore the statue of Lenin down.

“Good! These assholes think that they can control us, strut around calling us hohli and think that we’re just going to do exactly what they say. Russia always said that they’re our big brother but is this how siblings treat each other? All they want is to tear Ukraine apart. You think this came out of nowhere? You think it’s a coincidence that right after he spoke to Putin, Yanukovych doesn’t sign the agreement with EU? He’s a thug. A mafia thug who has just gone and ruined Ukraine’s future. He can’t even speak Ukrainian! And they wonder why people are rioting. They better be rioting.” I don’t have anything to say, so I go back to flipping through the tourist guide book.

It is the first tutorial for Australian Literature and we are, inevitably, discussing the cultural cringe.

“Do you think,” the tutor asks, “that perhaps there wouldn’t be a cringe surrounding Australian culture if we forced students to read classic books, like Voss or Seven Australians in Sydney?” The notion of forcing anything onto anyone seems very unAustralian because only the German girl and I agree that struggling through classics plants a sense of pride for the culture.

“I come from a former-Soviet country,” I take care not to say which one, “and we know we’ve done wrong in the past and we’ve made mistakes but that doesn’t matter because we also made Chekhov and Bulgakov and Gogol so...” The class laughs at my joke but deep down it’s not very funny. It feels good to claim things and create a link between yourself and your heritage.

Outside his former Kiev apartment sits Mikhail Bulgakov, made of bronze, his arms and legs crossed. The idea is, if you rub his nose you’ll be smarter and many tourists take photos accordingly. I have a photo sitting next to him imitating his pose.

I take my newly-cooked meat out of the fondue.

“It’s not the same, Chris.” Tanya’s thick accent desperately tries to school her Kiwi husband while still being reasonable.

“It’s not like here. Back there everyone is very aware of their nationality and we can feel the relations, they’re born into you. They don’t like us, they never have.”

31

Chris says you can’t generalise like that. Tanya, who is from Moldova, turns to the rest of us.

“I have a Russian friend at work, a really nice guy. We always used to talk in Russian to each other, it’s easier to speak your mother tongue, you know. Now, ever since it happened we speak English. Nothing in our behaviour has changed, we still joke and have long conversations but it’s all in English now.” Politics have become a sweet dessert that everyone can’t wait for. I put another piece of meat into the scorching fondue.

Vikrant stops eating his dinner and turns to look at me while I gather my things.

“You going home?” He’s one of those people who slur their words when they talk like you’ve known each other for years even though this is only the third time you’ve worked together. I nod. I am finally going home.

“Hey, you Russian?”

“No, I’m Ukrainian.”

He nods. “Good. You don’t like the Russians, do you?” He’s not being provocative; he’s just making conversation while he eats his dinner. I laugh.

“They’re alright, I don’t really... ” “I worked with a Russian once.” He cuts me off, shakes his head and exhales.

“Never liked the guy. He always had to be first there, always had to prove he was the best.” Vik scrunches up his face. “We Indians, you know, we don’t really give a shit.” We laugh and I turn to go home.

I’m lying in my late grandfather’s bed in a small apartment in Chernivtsi. The room smells of dusty, hardback copies of Lermontov and miniature, china dogs.

My stomach feels like it’s a battlefield. I can’t tell whether I need to throw up or shit. My grandma’s toilet has trouble flushing anyway. Fucking Ukrainian beer. I fade in and out of sleep. I hear glimpses of Natasha’s conversation with my uncle and grandma.

“She calls me racist. I know! It’s like you can’t say anything in Australia.

Anything you say is racist. I’m not being racist, I’m just saying that my life experiences have lead me to believe this, you know? You’re racist, blah blah.”

It’s one of those rare occurrences when all three of us like the dinner enough to eat it at the table together. Natasha looks at my dad and me. She pouts.

“I just realised that I am the only one in the family who is fully Ukrainian.”

Pavlo and I stop eating and just look at her. She shrugs.

“Even the cat is from New Zealand.” I shake my head and turn back to my food.

Pavlo laughs. “Can you imagine how shocked my dad would be if he was still alive? The Russians have invaded and the Germans are trying to help us.” I scoff.

All I know about my grandfather is that he loved Stalin and was a hoarder, like me. I felt so happy when grandma gave me all his old albums which were filled with categorised post cards he bought at markets. My bedroom wall is now covered in pictures of birds, flowers and old Lenin chuckling on a bench. I think Vladimir and I could have been good friends. Maybe. I don’t know much about Stalin though.

32

talking with a blindfold on

I like how you’ve become more political now. Like now when people tell you you have Russian features you correct them and say you have Slavic features.

It is the first time I see someone transitioning into a different gender. She asks where my name is from. I tell her. She asks if I have family over there. I do, but they’re all in the West so they’re not really in the heat of it all. She nods.

“I guess all you can do is look on the bright side. Poor Ukraine, though, I’m in international politics and I know how much it’s been tossed around. All throughout history other countries have been trying to take over, haven’t they?”

“Yeah, something like that, I haven’t done much research.”

She smiles, tells me she hopes things get better and that I have a good day. A couple of minutes later my co-worker comes up to me and says “Oh my God, did you see that transvestite before? Fucking hell, like I’ve seen trans people but that was so creepy.” I feel embarrassed that I didn’t have enough knowledge about Ukraine’s history to speak to her properly.

I finally reach the front of the queue. Sitting down at the computer I swivel my chair to face the young guy smiling politely at me (he gets paid for it).

“What can I do for you?” I take a deep breath.

“It’s quite funny, really. So, when I was confirming my details on the portal thing,” he begins to nod slowly and rhythmically, “it said that my nationality had been put down as Russian Federation, but I’m Ukrainian.” He stops nodding.

“And I tried to change it but it says I have to fill out a form to say I changed my passport. But the problem with that is I can’t prove that I’ve changed my passport from a Russian to a Ukrainian one because I never had a Russian passport so I’m not sure what to do.” I finish and we look at each other. He tries to keep his gaze calm and collected but after a moment he begins to laugh and shake his head.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know I shouldn’t laugh.” I start to laugh as well. “It’s just, I’m an international politics major and I kind of love your situation right now. It’s so incorrect!”

“My mum keeps yelling that it’s inappropriate and I need to tell everyone to change it.” We chuckle together until we can chuckle no more. He looks back at me frankly. “Seriously though, I don’t know what you should do. I’ve never come across this before.”

33

ROOFTOP ROMANCE, AND, HESITATION ANG REMUS

In the dark they stand against the light from the buildings, their bodies becoming shadows – or, the shadows becoming them – it doesn’t matter.

They want to ask what is on the other’s mind, but they are quiet, anyway. Anyway it doesn’t matter, we are talking about them and all of their light.

Then, he slips in front of him, him who is leaning over the wall. He wears him like a cloak, arms around arms. He doesn’t move.

They are still quiet – thinking – thoughtful. Where can they go?

He holds him like he is 34

glass, but he is getting bolder. His hands move to wrap around his torso. He doesn’t move. The light is still falling. They are not in love – or, not yet. They don’t know, but, nobody knows with these sort of things, these things people don’t know have the words for. He is careful with his moving, so is he, their closeness sets them wary, not with terror – the good sort that brings people together – or, sometimes, pull them apart. He wants to look at him without him returning the look – knows he can’t hold it – give him what he wants? He doesn’t move.

Neither does he. What do they want, each? I am thinking of what you are thinking: isn’t that universal desire? Anyway they are running out of time, but anyway the light is still there, waiting. The light is patient, although, they are not – or, at least not him. He presses his body, harder, onto his.

He doesn’t move – like the light he is waiting. Then, no one moves and they have to leave, but is this surprising?

They go with the light still there, unmoving.

35

36

limos . emaciate tzeyi koay with art by natalie seiler

she wept snow from her fingertips in the morning, when the sky spilled poppies from its womb and the rain filled her stomach, demanding her body be stripped of paper and remade in slate and stone, or emptied like a pearl yanked from its burrow – wisps of dark hair unfurled from her scalp, clavicles sliced from shoulder, cartilage encased ivory bone, wings lifting their fingers one by one from her spine, each thinner than petals, clearer than glass, she buried her blue veins in the dirt and watched it grow and only when the last of the petals became water and mirage did she awaken.

37

38

SPACEX AND THE NUMINOUS LUKE BURNS with art by edie m bush

T

he second-stage booster detaches from the Falcon 9 rocket and climbs into the sky, reaching speeds of over 35,000 kilometres per hour. The Earth spins below and continents swivel by as it hurls its payload, a communications satellite, towards geostationary orbit – the point at which the satellite will circle the Earth. Nothing falters and the second stage boost pushes the satellite harder still, eventually letting it go. Things run smoothly and below there are cheers.

This is not the most exciting thing to happen on 8 April this year. As the second stage goes on to complete its mission, the Falcon 9 rocket falls back to Earth with purpose. It adjusts to form a trajectory for a specific target. People watch its progress on a live stream and with each successful stage the SpaceX mission control is alive with anticipation. Grid-fins extend and channel the air around the seventy-metre-long body. The blue backdrop pales against the blazing thrusters. A drone ship rocks on the waves, awaiting its companion. Of Course I Still Love You is the ship’s name and it welcomes the rocket as it does something none have done before – it lands, upright, intact and on target with the accuracy of an impossible marksman. On a small barge-like ship in the middle of the ocean, it does this.

39

Mission control erupts into the kind of mirth that is only ever enjoined by the historic. You’d think we just landed on Mars. In some ways, we did. As I watch the mission unfold and the rocket perform a landing that had failed on four previous attempts, I can’t help but feel elated. Though I don’t think the words, I feel I’m watching something truly beautiful. There’s something more to this than just another successful mission, more than just an experiment. It holds promise, it boasts adventure, and it all represents a philosophy that is wholesome and enlightening – even spiritual.

My father was an avid Science Fiction fan as a young man. Used bookshops are full of dirt-cheap copies of the classics, along with the many literarily cheap that he undoubtedly devoured. He matured into a man of science but more or less grew out of Science Fiction novels – so he says. He’s long since put down the likes of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and neither of us finished Kym Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. He went on to enjoy the criminal mystery in Joe Nesbø’s Harry Hole, Tim Winton’s surrealisms in Cloudstreet and more recently, Richard Flanagan’s horror in his Narrow Road to the Deep North. I still haven’t lost my interest in Sci-Fi – faster-than-light travel, biotech, terraforming, artificial intelligence. Every so often, I’ll sink deep into some Sci-Fi universe like Halo; I’ll mull over ancient alien civilisations and ‘slip-space’ travel; I will gleam the biographies of alien scientists and absorb the topographies of strange artificial worlds. This is all within the confines of fiction and it’s for this reason that notable advances in spaceflight and technology in the real world excite me so much.

Even the most far-flung of these ideas aren’t necessarily supernatural. They are, to varying degrees, plausible, material. Biotech already exists in wearable forms, artificial intelligence is advancing at rates most of us probably don’t even know and the existence of ‘warp bubbles’ in space-time haven’t yet been disqualified from the realm of possibility. I’m not tempted by what is truly supernatural. We are a deeply atheistic family. My father was raised in Catholic schools, gaining an understanding of the old ways of credulity, tradition and religious thinking, and in these never saw any truth or validity. My mother too felt disinclined to embrace any of it and despite her insistence that I ought to believe whatever I saw fit, I quickly saw past the burning bush. It is now in other things that we, that I, take stock. I looked up and I’m yet to look down.

If there was ever going to be something that would evoke in me any sense of the numinous, it wasn’t going to be some church or deity. There are things heavier in meaning that imbue perspective and humility. To gaze upon the galaxies captured by the Hubble Telescope, as Christopher Hitchens said, is to see “extraordinary revelations… in colour and depth and majesty like nothing I think the human eye has ever seen. Turn away from this if you wish,” he suggests, “and gaze at a burning bush”. And how could you? The billions of swirling galaxies, flying away from us at speeds unfathomable, the number of stars so huge that it really does prove that we are just one point, one needle head in the universe. All those gas giants, rocky planets, icy moons...

40

spacex and the numinous

Yet this grand scale doesn’t diminish our hopes and desires. Though we may well be alone, we can still endeavour to make life better, we can still press against the dark with the things we build and the dreams we bring to light. When conversations around the dinner table aren’t on politics or gossip, then it’s likely to be on the natural world, on science – some new vaccine being discovered, some new advance in artificial intelligence or some brilliant piece of engineering. A rocket, perhaps.

These things are hopeful to us.

Science Fiction often takes reusable vessels and propulsion systems for granted.

The physics of gravity are punishing, our atmosphere hostile enough, that up until now we’ve been throwing away our rockets and vessels as we go, letting them break apart above the Earth.

Over dinner one night I excitedly tell my parents about Elon Musk, head of SpaceX (along with Tesla), and his mission for cheap and sustainable space flight.

Now that we can land rockets instead of letting them disintegrate in the atmosphere after launch, the costs have fallen dramatically. His space fairing dream is all part of a set of goals that are intrinsically humanistic – it is emblematic of our capacities for human endeavour, dignity and the pursuit of knowledge, that instead of taking a fable for the stars for granted we would want to chase them ourselves, that we want to improve our station as a species, that we want to explore and learn. These are ideas my father and I angrily profess and bounce off each other once the meal is well and truly over, slapping the table in affinity.

“I would like to die on Mars,” Musk has said, “just not on impact.” The aim should not just be to make our own planet safer and a more viable homeland.

SpaceX is about something even greater. It’s about reaching beyond our terrestrial roots. This is big picture stuff. Our survival may well depend on us getting off this little rock of ours and spreading out. And beyond survival, it taps into an instinct so imbedded in our species’ disposition that it rustles some of our innermost feelings – the need to explore, to go beyond. It has spurred humans on for centuries. Carl Sagan, late astronomer and futurist, understood this instinct. It is early, we are young, “but those other worlds… beckon… silently, they orbit the sun, waiting”.

Years ago, when I was young, Dad used to go outside to brush his teeth and look up at the stars. I’d join him in his stargazing beside the gumtrees, grass under bare feet.

“There’s Jupiter, you see it?”

“Oh yeah,” I’d say, “and there, that red one?”

“Mars. A lot closer.”

41

“What about that twinkling one?”

“Another star, but it’s far away. The twinkling could be it starting to die. Look, there’s Orion’s Belt, those three in a row there.”

“How far away do you think?”

“Too far,” he said.

Too far. If you look up at the night sky long enough, even in suburbia, you will start to see things happen. First it’s the twinkling, then passing satellites and then the shooting stars. The deeper you travel into the country, the more you can see. The Milky Way’s galactic core becomes visible, even other galaxies – clouds of dust to us. Mars is closer. It’s the next frontier. When that rocket landed in the Atlantic it spoke of making this frontier closer, tangible in our minds, real, in my lifetime. And herein lies the beauty of it. There is something to be said for the natural symmetry of things, of mathematics, physics and of beauty as being right. This is the beautiful as something that works, the manifestation of an ideal.

We built it, one more piece that will help us towards the goal of travelling farther than we’ve ever been.

If SpaceX’s plans are anything to go by, my father will be in his mid-60s when we finally make our mark on the Red Planet. By the time we’re able to reach other stars, my father will no doubt be resting in the earth and so will I. Too far.

But together we will experience the planetary elation when the first astronauts walk in the dust of our new planet, heroes of the ages. His literary tastes moved on, I think, with the growing considerations of daily concerns – family, the nation, work. My father’s hands are cracked, beginning to wrinkle, and though with age he may have gotten over this addiction to Science Fiction, I can sense the glowing in his mind when we muse together on this future. We both look up to the great canvas of a vacuum and see those distant stars, careless in their suspension, planets close and constellations far away. We look up and think, “maybe, one day”.

There are few things that give rise to a sense of spirituality in me but this is one of them. If, at the end of what I hope to be a long and fortuitous life, I regret anything, it will be that I was not born in an age when we could reach beyond our solar system, to the next spot of light. But there is solace, a deep and wholesome one, in the idea that our children might do so. That they might bathe in the light of a new star.

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spacex and the numinous

43

44

THE WINDOW ALISON TEALBY with art by sam nelson

F

or one moment a night, one fleeting, impossible moment, you can see it.

The shifting tail, the misshapen fins. The black, sunken eyeballs – the size of your fist from your vantage point, though you know for a fact that they are much, much larger. Worst of all is the mouth. A huge, gaping slash across its pointy face, forever unhinged in a chasm-like yawn. Through this mouth the creature will suck away at the sky. The bright flecks that decorate the night will be pulled down towards the blackness and vanish. The creature, propelled by its fishlike tail, will swallow its way forwards, slowly, steadily, while you watch from your bed.

Your bedside window glimmers, cold and unfriendly. Your breathing has left a foggy patch across the surface and you rub at it with your pyjama sleeve. You are waiting for the creature. You can feel its arrival. You can feel it in your stomach, in the way the window shivers and knocks against your head. You watch the lights flick off in the distance, one second wavering and bright, and the next, gone, like a candle blown out too quickly, by a breath too strong.

The creature is larger than anything that you will ever see. It is larger than this world, larger than the sun. It swarms across the sky in a continuous motion. Slow, but ceaseless, it wipes away at the sky as it passes, like a duster sweeping a clean path through a blackboard, leaving behind only the suffocating darkness.

And you can see it now, or flashes of it anyway, when it stretches out and fills up the entire world – just for a moment, that horrible, infinitesimal moment – and you won’t breathe until it fades back into the clouds and the dust.

45

No one can speak about the creature, not properly, not truthfully. Not even when the creature grows – when you can see every jagged peak of its teeth and the flashes of visibility become longer and longer and you cannot hold from mentioning the creature to somebody else. But their responses never move beyond that falseness, that foolishness reserved for strangers and children.

‘It won’t hurt you,’ they tell you, as though by saying this they’ll make it so. ‘It’s too far away.’

So the conversations ends and they wait for you to move on to safer, more sensible topics. You do not say what you both know. That it is not too far away. That the universe is vast, but so is the creature. That on some nights, on the worst nights, when everything is still and quiet, how for one horrible moment you can feel its heavy, thumping heartbeat pulse through your chest as though it is your own. That the night is growing darker and darker and that one day there will be nothing bright in the sky but the moon and that the creature will finally see you, and then everything will be gone, engulfed, extinguished. But you smile vaguely and say, ‘yeah you’re probably right,’ and they smile too as though they have helped.

You know that they know that they are lying. They too must have felt its tremble, have watched the sky slowly become devoid of stars. Perhaps they too have seen it, with its jagged teeth and lumpy skin, or heard it wailing through the darkness, hungry and insatiable. But they tell you not to worry, like they tell themselves not to worry when the night becomes sleepless and their windows shudder against their heads. And when the sun comes up, blazing and hot, it will be so much easier to ignore the creature, so much easier to pretend it isn’t there.

But you can never forget, in your stomach, in your chest, that somewhere above your head – far away, but still there – is the creature, devouring its way through everything that has ever existed.

Then the sky will grow dark and you’ll press your face against the glass and wait. The creature will pass and for one moment you will watch as it shifts and looms over the Earth, swallowing the bright specks of the sky. For that moment you won’t be able to move or speak and your room will grow cold and your window will drip with your foggy breath, as you will watch the stars vanish and wonder what will happen when the sky finally empties.

At an impossible distance away from you, the impossible creature ambles on, never knowing, never caring, for your fears. It swims on slowly, silently, in an endless cosmic trajectory. Its mouth gapes open and its eyes slide shut. Like shiny flecks of dust, suns and solar systems and souls are pulled down into the vortex, spiralling and helpless.

But despite what you believe, despite what everyone believes, the stars are not gone. They have moved and they have changed, but they are not lost. And one day, perhaps, if you’re feeling brave, or sad, or reckless, you might open your window. The cold air will hit your face, suck out your breath. The creature will 46

the window

emerge from the clouds and you will see it more closely, more clearly, than before.

You will see past the rubbery skin and the mountainous teeth, and within its enormous belly you will see lights. Tiny, impossible lights, orbiting, swirling, in an endless dance conducted against each other by the pull of their own weight. A hidden, impossible cavern of light, millions of lights, all joined together into one glorious, invulnerable flame. Perhaps one day, if you are very lucky, you will see it – the hidden brightness, the dance, the warmth – and maybe the gaping mouth will beckon you and the sky will grow dark, darker than you could have ever imagined, and it no longer feel empty, but inviting, and full.

47

Still Life Paintings and Finding Bits of Art in the Kitchen Fruit Bowl SUE-ANN CHAN with art by amie green

Ah, the classic still life painting. With its plump red Apples so realistic you could almost reach out and Pluck one through the paper. As if it rolled right Out of the artist’s palm and the canvas snatched it With greedy fingers. Along with those grapes, dripping Like strings of jade pearls. And the shy little lemon Tucked away in the corner.

Isn’t it peculiar how fruits are dull, but not their Clones made of paint strewn paper? How skeletal Sketches of apples are framed, while organic ones remain Dust balls at the bottom of schoolbags. The only applause They receive, the slapping of shoes on the street, as their Crushed bits are paced on by restless people. Why must An object be knighted by an artist’s paintbrush, blown Up on gallery walls, before it can be called Beautiful?

48

A two-dimensional painting cannot mimic how The scent of grapes, hooks you by the nose, Dropping you in quaint vineyards with skies soaked With sunlight and swallows. Picasso, with his paints And his palettes cannot be praised as one of the greatest Artists when nature sculpts life forms out of Dirt. Turns mud and water into tree and Flower. How the basket of apples on my Kitchen table can feed an entire family.

Resurrect a starving child from the inside Out. Now that is beauty. That is Art.

My mother hunches over the kitchen countertop, Her hands dry and scalded from decades of scrubbing Dishes. She empties a box of apples into a bowl and they Fall one by one like blobs of red paint. I’ve always been Amazed by how she, so effortlessly, creates symbols Of love out of nothing but fruit, flour and shavings of Skin around her heart. And that, is truly The highest form of Art.

49

LOVE ANG REMUS

falling, tell me about the dream of a path leading on,

where we bring the bodies back,

all of them back to the warm glow from a sun

without the incessant chants of a collective

that no longer matter,

and us, we mean something to our unfettered selves,

no pretending to be,

no spectres convincing us of another self,

or of our undeserving to our selves.

50

We can be anyone we want,

and then there is the part where we fall

in love with the road going nowhere and everywhere,

you meant it

in a good way.

You want this story, who doesn’t?

Who wants this story of love in despair, who wants this dream of a hairpin turn colliding into a clearing of desolation

all of these bodies

with nowhere to go,

and next to you, love

We are in a classic western shootout,

and a gun.

familiar bodies open everywhere they lie

littering the field,

their bodies

open bodies piled

against bodies on top of bodies their hands together and clutching

their chests they go

still unexpressed all of their lives

crossed out

the stories of

their love crossed out.

51

Don’t you want to fight for love?

Everyone wants to die

for love, love.

Love

they say it like a religion and glare at us apostates.

We become our martyrs because no one

will fight with us. No one wants to see our love, don’t you want to die

for me?

Will you die

Look at the ghosts of our shared histories cheering

for you, you must go

before it is too late. It must be this way…

a reckoning

for me, love?

Everywhere they come swarming

towards

this retribution with nowhere to hide.

It is too late but this isn’t a story

about salvation so take the gun away

from your mouth,

52

you a flood

love

why is it easier to accept death when you feel

that you deserve it? Shall we go

together, love? Do you finally dare

to hold my hand while all of them stare at us?

But this isn’t a story about eternal romance

either, just pure,

unbridled senselessness.

No one gets to die

for each other, they die

for being

to imagine?

themselves, is that so hard

We are already this close in conscious moments

why wake up?

Outside, still bright, rain still falling.

Heavier. I ask what you’re waiting for,

tell you to hurry up and come in.

You ask if there is

anywhere else to go anyway, and you meant it

in a good way.

53

MORNING, NOT GOING AS PLANNED GREER SUTHERLAND with art by amie green

54

T

his morning I found the sugar bowl empty of its sugar and full of something else.

The sugar must have been poured out somewhere, a deathly puddleparadise for ants. Now, next to the coffee pot, the sugar bowl – well, not the sugar bowl – just the bowl… well, it had become a fish bowl.

They bobbed in light-shifting water, the size of silverfish. Only, not the insect silverfish, you see, but actual silver fish. I stood there, uncertain, with a teaspoon in my hand. I laid it down (clink) and cupped my hands around the small bowl, peering closer.

They weren’t just fish, they were sharks. Tiny sugar sharks. Gently, I hovered my finger over the surface between their straight-swirling fins, little grey triangles cutting air and water. I looked up around the kitchen. The sink gleamed innocently, the cupboards were all closed. No sign of any sugar bandit. No sign of any miniature shark off-loaders.

I tilted the bowl towards myself, watching their tails whiplash like trailers on the back of speeding cars. Sharks aren’t supposed to swim backwards, are they? I could totally just… grab a shark by its fin and drag it back-pedalling through the water. It would be an example to other sharks, something taught in shark school: follow your dreams and you can do anything. ‘Look at Harvey,’ they would say, ‘he was never supposed to swim backwards, but look at him!’

But I hesitated, the counter hard on my elbows, because I couldn’t quite remember if sharks didn’t swim backwards because they were wusses, or for breathing purposes. I didn’t want an asphyxiating shark on my hands, not this early in the morning, so I decided against it. Harvey would have to deal with the futility of shark existence by himself. But I did dip my finger into the water, amongst the orbiting bodies. Ripples washed over their dorsals. One shark strung away from its pattern to come see, maybe it could sense my slow-pulsing blood.

It isn’t everyday you get to touch a shark, especially one in your sugar bowl, so I flicked my finger at it, bumping it on its pointed, sniffing nose.

It got angry. Real angry. It thrashed around, the little grey guy, and bit down.

Pinpoint teeth gnashed but it just felt like a door hinge closing on my finger, a small sting.

‘No blood was drawn in the flicking of this shark’s nose.’

I teasingly tapped its nose again with the pad of my thumb, then lifted my finger out again so that water fell in drops from it and sighed. Sharks were nice, I suppose, their eternal circling. But all I really wanted was sugar. The sun deepened on the window sill, spilling creamily onto the counter. The sharks still circled. It was 7:46AM. It was a lot.

55

CROCODILE TEARS CERA BROWN with art by aisha trambas

Walking, alone, at night Stumbling around a pond that was a lake that was a sea And wetting my feet in the cool summer water I came across a cat in a tree Conversing with a crocodile.

And I thought ‘this seems very strange’ As the cat arranged her tail And went on talking in a low voice: ‘I was feeling quite alone’ she said ‘I’ve felt quite alone for a long time’ she said ‘You don’t know what it’s like, or perhaps you do But you have your pond-lake-sea, you see And I’ve never had that.’

And the crocodile raised his head in an extremely sympathetic way For a crocodile.

56

‘I was looking for cheap alcohol-fuelled fucks (I would spike my milk with liquor just to get it all done quicker) But it’s fun fucking you And the dark shapes that rise from the skin of strangers And whisper with vile vodka breaths Staining skin, fashioning star-shaped bruises: Marks of shame So rowdy soldiers lining up can take their pick And shoot straight inside: The shapes recede in the warmth, in the light And I laugh and smile and smile and laugh And laugh and smile too much, Giddy - I’m sure you think me very strange’.

‘I can see what you mean’ said the crocodile ‘And I have cried a great deal too, My gosh, I have cried more than you!

But in the night, with you, it’s nice.

And I don’t so much mind that the water is bland And the food tastes the same And I’m part of some human’s commercial game Because in the night, with you, it’s nice.’

57

And the crocodile cried – crocodile tears But the cat didn’t seem to mind.

‘It’s hard being a creature like me Nobody trusts you, nobody wants you They’re scared of your feet and your teeth –’ ‘I’m not’ said the cat ‘Show me’ said he ‘How’ said she And the crocodile opened his mouth in a grin And said ‘come now cat, it’s alright to hop in’ And the trusting cat left her perch In the birch – jumped on to the nose to the mouth Of the crocodile, slipped down his throat – (His plan all along) And the crocodile burped.

To my horrified expression The crocodile replied ‘The pussy was nice so it is quite a shame But hey, I’m just a crocodile, I’m not to blame.’

58

FIRST PERSON SINGULARS PRETENDING AT PLURALITY DZENANA VUCIC with art by anais poussin

W

e are cocooned in soft light, hazy through windows I’m too lazy to clean.

The build-up of grime on glass colours the air in dustmotes and sepia and the light weighs heavy against our skin. The air is thick with the smell of sex – the acrid tang of old sweat and the briny, musty stickiness of your cum. I can tell that you’re awake by your breathing. We have been awake for a long time now, lying in silence and gathering ourselves for the coming embarrassment. We will disappoint one another very soon and I wish you’d just get up and leave – sneak away while I pretend to sleep. Leave our dignity intact.

You yawn, giving yourself away. I consider not saying anything but before I can make a decision, you roll over to face me, catching me in wakefulness. I can feel the length of your naked, clammy body against mine. Your crotch is warm and moist against my thigh, your cock a flaccid worm against my burning skin.

‘Good morning,’ I say, more confident than I feel.

‘Good morning. How’d you sleep?’ Your voice is stale with sleep and crusty around the edges.

‘Okay, I guess. You?’ We both know that neither of us cares how the other slept and you don’t bother to reply. You yawn again and stretch, your back and shoulders cracking with hollow little pops, before propping yourself up on a bent elbow.

You are watching me intently and I pretend that your attention doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. I don’t know where to look so I close my eyes.

59

‘Did you dream?’ You ask, trailing your fingers down my chest and stomach.

They are large and blunt, your fingernails rough. I bet you bite them. You’re tracing a pattern against my sternum, though I can’t tell exactly what it is. It reminds me of a game I used to play with my sister. We would write words into one another’s backs and try to guess what the other had inscribed. I don’t think you’re trying to tell me anything, though.

‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember my dreams, so I wouldn’t know if I did.’

‘You talked.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. But I don’t know what you said. I don’t think it made much sense.’

‘Huh.’ We fall silent again. I am taken aback by your lie, your feigned intimacy with my sleep self. I did not sleep. I could not. I am self-righteous on this, though who knows why. People try to own one another in strange ways, I guess. You watch your fingers move against my skin and I take the opportunity to study you.

You are younger than I remember, the skin of your cheeks smooth and cleanshaven. Your eyes are some intermittent hazel brown colour (I can’t quite see from your lashes) and your hair, dark brown. You are drenched in freckles, like someone has come along and thrown a bucket of them over your head, soaking your face and shoulders and spattering your chest and stomach in uneven clusters.

I’ve never seen so many freckles on someone’s body before and I have a sudden urge to count them. I wonder if anyone has touched every single one of them. I think of my own freckles, lightly scattered across my shoulders, a few fallen stray across my arms and legs. When I was seventeen, my first boyfriend counted them.

We lay on the top bunk of his and his brothers’ bed, wagging math class and he lifted my limbs carefully, inspected each closely, and rolled me over to tally the spots across my back. He touched every single one and I remember feeling oddly colonized; like my body was no longer mine now that his fingers had laid claim to all of it. What else was left for me to own? I silently count your freckles, perhaps as vindication, perhaps to have a small part of you; a memento of another abortive attempt at intimacy. There are thirty-nine freckles on your right ear and I think I might be the only person in the world to know this.

‘Do you ever think about being raped?’ I am jolted out of my languid tallying and for a second I have no idea what you’ve asked me. It can’t have been that.

‘What?’

‘Do you ever imagine getting raped?’ Your voice is too casual for the question and I don’t even know your name.

‘Do you mean, like, do I fantasize about it? As a fetish or something?’

‘No – though, do you?’ You look curious, but not particularly interested, as though we’re discussing the possibility of liquid water on Mars. I went home with a boy once who told me that he was one of the one hundred finalists for NASA’s Mars One mission. He told me that the next morning and I knew that I wouldn’t have slept with him if he had mentioned it the night before. He said it like a boast, but all I could think about was how boring Mars would be. You’d get tired of growing potatoes and watching television after a while. He told me that they 60

first person singulars pretending at plurality

would probably have to drink filtered urine because of the lack of water. He said that casually too.

‘No.’ I wonder if I will start to think about it now.

‘Mmm. I didn’t think that would be your thing.’ You pause, considering the best way to phrase your question. I wonder how you think you know me and what is or isn’t my ‘thing’. I want to tell you that I like being tied up and that I get off on asphyxiation, just to see you raise your eyebrows. I don’t say either because I am embarrassed. Maybe I’m afraid; sometimes it’s hard to know what I’m feeling.

‘Do you ever think about getting properly raped – attacked-at-night raped?’ This is a different tack but I feel like you’re still asking the same question.

‘Am I worried that it’ll happen, or am I scared of it?’ I’m still not sure where you’re going with this and I feel like I’ve picked up the wrong thread again.

Maybe on purpose. ‘I think everyone is, to some extent. At least, every woman is.’

You sigh, not frustrated exactly, but close. ‘No. I don’t mean that either. I mean: do you imagine what would happen if you were raped. Like, how you would be found. Or maybe you’d call someone to help you but they wouldn’t answer and you’d leave a voicemail begging for them to save you while you’re being attacked. Having to go to the police, telling your family, your friends. Maybe being on 6o Minutes or A Current Affair about it. Writing a book.’ You explain this slowly, as if it were the obvious interpretation of the question. As if you aren’t asking something obscene.

‘What the fuck are you asking? And why?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just curious, I guess. Don’t you think you could get a lot out of it? I know it’s a shitty thing to happen, but you could get a lot out of it. And do a lot with it. Become some kind of ambassador or spokesperson against it. Get a bunch of sympathy but use it for good. You know.’ I don’t know. I want to think that I don’t know. I’m worried that I do know.

‘I don’t think you understand what rape is for women.’

‘This isn’t about gender.’

‘Of course it’s about gender. Rape is about gender.’

‘Okay, fine. Can we put gender aside then? Can we think about just people?’ I think this is a stupid thing to say but I don’t press my advantage. I’m not sure quite how to and I’m tired. I don’t know where my advantage falls in the space between our stranger bodies and the time since drunken fucking.

‘Okay, fine. I don’t think people are like that. I don’t think anyone, regardless of gender, thinks like that.’ Obstinance is a failing strategy.

‘No? I think it’s something everyone thinks about.’

‘It’s not.’

‘We all want to be the victim and the hero. Like some kind of weird inward-looking schadenfreude.’ You look smug and I hate you. Our skin is slick with sweat and when you shift to rearrange yourself, you slide against me, slippery like a fish.

‘Maybe. But not like that. No one wants to be raped, and if they are, a book deal is the last thing they’d be thinking about.’

61

‘How do you know?’

‘How do you?’

‘I’d know better than you.’

‘Because you’re a woman?’

‘Yes. Because I’m a woman.’ You laugh and I wonder how many girls you’ve asked this. I feel suddenly uncomfortable with my notch on your bedpost (or your notch on mine). ‘Sometimes I think about getting some kind of incurable disease,’ you confess, after a few minutes of silent contemplation. You hand the words to me gently, like a peace offering, but I’m not sure that it’s the same thing at all.

‘Cancer, maybe. Or AIDS. I think about starting to get visibly sick and what I would want to do with my remaining time. How people would react. My mum and dad, friends, a chick I’m seeing.’

‘I think there’s something wrong with you.’

‘I think you’re dishonest.’

Outside, I can hear the 96 tram rumble down the street, its bell clanging a warning to time-poor pedestrians jaywalking to more important engagements. On weekday mornings it runs every six minutes and I enjoy the compartmentalisation of my life into these easy, bite-sized pieces. It is pleasant, sometimes, to watch my life go by in discrete six-minute intervals, to chronicle my wasted time in easy little chapters. You’ve rolled onto your stomach and are checking your phone, scrolling through your Facebook feed with apparent disinterest. I let two more trams rumble past. Their bells are silent and this game has gone on too long. I don’t know what to do with my hands and my mouth is uncomfortably dry. When the words come, they are cracked and creaking, straining against the confines of hard consonants and the loud loud loud quiet nestled between us.

‘Sometimes I think about my family dying in a car accident.’ I don’t have to look to see your smirk. ‘Finding out at work, everyone trying to comfort me. Having to go back to Sydney to settle the estate. Giving the eulogy. I think about whether or not I would cry – I don’t think I would, for some reason – and what I would do with my sister’s clothes.’ We are silent for a long time and I forget to keep tabs on the trams. Instead, I finger the bed sheet; writing messages in the cloth just to hear my fingernails against the fabric. ‘We’re bad people.’

‘I think everyone’s bad people.’ I know that you think you’ve won but I’m not convinced by your re-heated little aphorisms or your casual self-satisfaction. I regret my admission, a sacrifice of pride to your higher (lower?) opinion. A debasing of my self and I don’t even like you. I think – and I honestly do – that you’re right, that people are this small, this slavishly self-involved. But make-believing otherwise is what makes us human.

‘Do you ever think that maybe rape isn’t the operative thing in your little scenario? That with or without it, I could tell my friends and family and go on 60 Minutes and write a book and all of that and that you would be my rapist?’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘But I could.’ I win the argument on a technicality and victory is bitter on my tongue. Maybe lying is what makes us human.

62

63

UMSU is located in the city of Melbourne, situated at the heart of Wurundjeri land.

A key member of the Kulin Nations, we pass our respects on the Wurundjeri elders, both past and present and acknowledge the land we are on was never ceded.