As children, wild and unwatched in the streets of Kerman, we played dodgeball religiously. Every day, no exceptions. Those days our bodies were still as swift as hummingbirds, as agile as fish, swooshing away from the yellow ball thrown at us as if it were a comet on fire. The most glorious moments of the…
When you see your ex with a baby strapped onto him for the first time, don’t act surprised. Even though you haven’t seen him in years, obviously, and you’ve just bumped into him outside the cafe where you both used to sit with your laptops, attempting to study, but too distracted by each other, legs…
Tommy threw an inflatable inner tube and rope into the boot of the Holden, on top of the crate. The bottles clattered together. It was Saturday. We had all finished work for the morning and were heading up the back of Lake Tekapo, to the canals, to camp out. ‘What’s that for,’ asked Jed, ‘you…
She gripped the stainless-steel handrail and planted her feet wide apart, stabilizing herself as the tram traveled over the uneven tracks. With her other hand, she shook her wet umbrella, adding a layer of moisture to the already damp floor. The tram came to a halt and its mechanical doors swung open to a flock…
1 Last August, I bought a one-way ticket to Mexico City where I stayed in a hostel and spent nine days losing myself in anything and everything I could. I drank happy hour margaritas and did lines with my new friends and went to raves downtown. Still sparkly from the booze and the drugs, I…
Helena Pantsis (she/they) is an editor, writer, and artist from Naarm, Australia, with a fond appreciation for the gritty, the dark, and the experimental. Her works have been published in Overland, Island, Meanjin, and Cordite. More can be found at hlnpnts.com.
At the State Hermitage Museum, people are constantly taking selfies in front of Black Square (1915). Whether or not we consider it to be a ‘correct’ way to engage with an artwork, selfie-taking is increasingly common in art museums world-wide; it’s a contemporary cultural phenomenon, with audiences typically singling out a particular ‘iconic’ work to…
When I was eleven years old, my mother took me for Kaffee und Kuchen | coffee and cake at the Café Landtmann in Vienna. We sat in an elegant room with high ceilings, under severely beautiful lamps. We were tourists, like several other customers, but there were a handful of old Austrian men, too, wearing…