Mum is a fan of expensive shopping, but not much of a gift giver outside of birthdays and Christmas. So, seeing her at my front door holding a glossy white gift box—the type you get from fancy shops, tied up with a bow—immediately put me on edge. She hardly ever visited, especially without calling first. …
When she opened the front door Jake stood there with his clown behind him. The clown wore a big full-cheeked smile, with the slightest bit of stubble pushing out through his makeup. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised, the clown always followed him everywhere, like a rainbow-coloured shadow, but for some reason she had…
In the queue at the cafe, four people are in front of me. All enjoying the usual delights of the English seaside when the sun comes up at the beginning of June. They all look pickled somewhere from brown to red, each wearing their comfort or discomfort in place of winter coats, each shuffling towards…
Shauna felt certain there was a dead body buried on her new property. Sometimes it was bloated in the water tank. Others, it was buried under the shipwrecked rowing boat, the one with the bromeliads sprouting above clay sky-rises architectured by the wasps. She had ten acres of New Zealand bushland, where the skyline was…
He pours me into the copper perfume bottle. A dropped pearl of me trembles on the bottle’s lip, before sliding in. He stoppers the bottle; I am in darkness. I slosh as the bottle is carried elsewhere. Low chanting, muffled. Someone unstoppers me. That pearl that so recently rejoined me slips out, away. That pearl…
She chews the pen until her teeth ache, the plastic splintering faintly under the pressure. The ink is metallic, bitter as it seeps into her mouth. The paper beneath her hands is soft and damp, its edges curling inward as though retreating from the weight of her touch. Bread. Canned beans. Powdered milk. Each word…
At just 9 years old, Eastern-Southland-based artist Paul McLachlan’s eyes were opened to the potential of art by the modernist masterpieces on display at the Guggenheim exhibition that toured to Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1996. This profound experience ignited a lifelong passion for art, leading him to pursue a career as an artist. ‘This…
with the inward facing surface of her left hand the daughter touches her eyelids often imagining her fingers as guardians the kauri trees surround the house twenty or so the mother drives the daughter to a clinic where there is a sunporch and a sundeck the daughter grows anxious about the…
the prism and the rose and the late poems by Schaeffer Lemalu. Compound Press (2024). RRP: $30.00. PB, 80pp. ISBN: 9781991154170. Reviewed by Tulia Thompson. One way to approach Sāmoan-Lebanese poet Schaeffer Lemalu’s (1983–2021) posthumous collection the prism and the rose and the late poems is via his attention to the visual. Lemalu was also…
Ōtarahaka trachyte passage Tamatea’s exploded ashes scarred hills forestry’s slash remains scattered broom blossoms radiate like melted butter kōhatu fallen resemble ancient dolmen tombs remarkable dykes rock slabs climbing skyward Ariana Tikao is a Kāi Tahu artist of the sound and word variety from Ōtautahi Christchurch. She was a 2023 Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at Canterbury University, and was awarded as a New Zealand…