Seasons Of Change
I’ve been paying attention to dusk a lot this past summer. Noting the gradual darkening of the sky from blue to pink to black; tilting an ear to the crescendo and diminuendo of birds calling to each-other as they settle in to roost. Watching as trees turn from three-dimensional, textural things to stage-prop silhouettes. I’ve been looking for sugar-gliders. There’s a population of them in a large bushland park in suburban north-east Melbourne; there are doubtless other populations of them around town, too. They emerge from their hollows in the twilight, tiny possums with improbably long and bushy tails and […]
The Steady Judgment Of The Voters
It is not yet three years since the last federal election on July 2, 2016. Since that fateful day, when the Turnbull coalition government’s majority was reduced from thirty to just one, all eight state and territory governments have faced the electorate. New South Wales completed the cycle last Saturday. Of the eight elections, governments were re-elected in five (ACT, Qld, Tas, Vic and NSW) and defeated in three (NT, WA and SA). It’s a handy reminder that governments usually win. Since 2000, governments have been re-elected at 31 of the 48 elections held in all jurisdictions. That’s a success […]
What I’m (Not) Reading
1. That mound of New Yorkers dating back to the Mesozoic Era. I know it, you know it. 2. The interminable paragraphs before the recipe. Life is too short for me to share your fermentation journey. Just give me the ingredients already. 3. Erotic Christmas fiction. Really, Kindle? Recommended for me? This long we’ve been together and still you don’t know me? 4. Photos of your bullet journal. I was here for your teeny-tipped felt pens but I am uninterested in your hydration levels. 5. The credits. I know. But there’s a line for the toilets and a babysitter to […]
Valley Of Decisions
Mr B had always lived there. Long before we arrived to make a home on the Bega River, he had built his own. His was a simple affair; a busy temple to blue that drew an annual parade of female admirers. You see, Mr B is a satin bower bird, that most industrious and enterprising of creatures. A year ago, a firestorm devastated Tathra, a small town on the south coast of New South Wales. Our house survived, but the forest understory on our block did not. We wandered over our blackened land in a daze, and wondered what happened […]
Essays
‘There is No Axe’: Identity, Story and a Sombrero
In a 2016 Meanjin essay one of this country’s most celebrated writers, Alexis Wright, asked us a fundamental question in relation to storytelling and the role of the writer. ‘What happens when you tell somebody else’s story?’ she asked, in a thoughtful piece of writing that did not demand that white Australia not engage with the story of Aboriginal people (as some have concluded). In addressing the question, Wright asked of each of us, Aboriginal and ‘settler’ both, that we give deeper consideration to the act of telling stories and take greater responsibility for the decisions we make as writers. […]
Fiction
Something like Revolution
After your world ended for the third time, you walked. The gold ring on your right hand heavy and the blue band around your left wrist even heavier. ‘Rip-off fitbits’ was how Intisar had described them three years ago, as the two of you sat on the couch in the living room of your then new apartment, staring down at your clasped black hands.
Memoir
Of the Name
From a young age, names preoccupied me. As a child I didn’t like my name and I would often daydream about changing it. Na’ama (in Hebrew, נעמה) was too heavy for me.
Poetry
Rites, with Sorghum Amplum
We sat on the porch that winter and
talked of murder, imagined bodies trapped
beneath the breaking crust of the field.
The house whistled with broken windows,
the lead veins running through the glass…