It was our first lunch out, our first restaurant meal after isolation — and it seemed so rushed. The waiter hurried to seat us, pushing the menus in into our slow clumsy hands, the traffic hurtled by, the arms of the municipal clock spun in their course.
Then came the wine and the bread and we had at it, as if we had never tasted anything as wonderful — this ordinary crust, this cheap carafe.
Continue reading
after Heather Christie
‘This place is a forest now,’ the woman said. Concrete blocks were being cracked apart by glorious mountain ash and yellow box. Our roads had become torrents cutting swathes through schoolyards and housing estates. There were jungle effects in the malls and wildness in the libraries.
Continue reading
February 2017: It’s Question Time in Australia’s Parliament. It’s been a difficult week for the Government: dire polls, grim economics, scandals and policy flip-flops. They need a circuit-breaker. The Treasurer steps up to address the House, in his hand is a lump of coal. Continue reading
[This looks much better on my site]
[Dear Readers – There’s some strong language in this one. It’s not for the easily offended]
The bus is going round again. Continue reading
‘Anonymity is golden Paul.’ I can still hear Dr Flores in the induction session an age ago. ‘Never reveal anything personal to a caller, it confuses the issue and the issue is them. Provide only the sketchiest details, your name only in the direst circumstance and never ever agree to meet.’ Continue reading
…‘heh…hello…hello heyloo-oo-oo…Mr Lang, can you hear me?’
‘Just nod…that’s it. I thought you’d want to know where you stand.’
‘You’re on the ground, your eyelids are fluttering and your breathing is shallow.
‘There’s some twitching in your extremities, some jiggling…’ Continue reading
Awake/not awake, how do you tell? Did she dream that the rain through headlights had become living shadows; that the ceiling writhed and twisted and the room ran with water; that the cornices leaked and streams bubbled down the walls, over the cupboard, over the dresser, over the photographs and onto the floor? Continue reading
00:00
Every story needs an arc, a trajectory. Here’s one—Elliot Greenleaf steps off a concrete ledge and begins to accelerate towards the pavement 200 meters below. He looks down and the street is rushing up at him like a lion. Continue reading
“it is relatively easy to perceive that Gogol must have intended [The Nose] as a satire on social climbers…but it will become clear that…under the guise of grotesque farce, a drama of sexual failure is enacted. Spycher, P., The Slavic and East European Journal, 7. No. 4, 1963, p. 361
An empty signifier
G reckoned that it was all extraordinary and happened in the Capital one autumn over a few days, barely a fortnight. Continue reading
Peter Frankis writes 