Cirrus@Austlit

'Back in a simpler time, it felt like everyone I knew enjoyed a bit of Tom, Mark and Travis. If you’re within the bracket we publish here at V-dub, perhaps (hopefully) you have similar memories complete with jumping around and shared laughing fits. My older friends , maybe did so with an element of self-aware amusement while the rest— still too young for the facial piercings we so desired—would rock out regularly and without irony. Objectively we knew there were better bands, and they rotated on playlists too, but Blink captured something fun and rebellious. They built a space of abandon where nothing ever really went all that wrong.' 

 (Introduction)

'‘I am a fiction writer.’ I say it as readily as ‘I’m an atheist’ or ‘I have blue eyes’. I say it and feel as though it’s set in stone, Great Pyramid-like. But then I realise: I’ve also written poetry. I’ve taken classes in it. Hell, I’ve even won a poetry prize or two. And so another truth emerges. Yes, I’ve had short fiction published. But also an equal amount of poetry and, as it turns out, nonfiction published. Curiously, the only things I’ve ever had published in Voiceworks have been nonfiction pieces.'

 (Introduction)

'It was Cumquat who first pointed out the monkey to Astrid. 'It's there-on her shoulder,' he breathed in her ear, and his whiskers tickled...' (Publication abstract)

'Grandma cut her own throat. She had been sick for a while. She would walk out of the house naked and forget where she was. Sometimes she would get angry for no reason. She said she heard God talking to her. It was me who found the body. The skin was swollen around the wound like lips. Her throat was smiling at me. There was a lot of blood. I was five. Mother cried a lot. I didn't know why. It wasn't her mother. Even though Father had left when I was born, Grandma lived with us after she got sick. Grandma would give me boiled sweets. She didn't like the red ones. There was a lot of blood...' (Publication abstract)

'They heard the muffled laughter of their father entertaining the children, the three women outside smoking. Their husbands, inside and cooking, were muttering between themselves when the sisters will give up the habit...' (Publication abstract)

'You're standing in the kitchen when the urge simmers up. It's only been a few days since the last time but already the hunger is back. You turn from the window to find your wife there, a shoulder to the doorsill: hair plied from sleep, arms crossed under her breasts, the torch in one hand...' (Publication abstract)

'Cass meets Tula in a hostel somewhere between Prague and Paris, two days after Tula's boyfriend leaves her for some slack-jawed Czech bitch with huge tits and an ugly smear of a frown...'(Publication abstract)

'Peter liked the way they moved. He used to watch peter for hours after he got home from school. He would run straight upstairs before he'd even taken off his schoolbag. He would close the curtain and turn the lights off and put peter's bowl on the floor and pull his doona over peter and himself. Peter would bring his dolphin-shaped torch under there and pull back the fin so that a light would shine out and fill the fishbowl with colours, and peter would move. He would dance in and out of his house: a sunken ship filled with treasure. If the light was just right peter was the same colour as the coins scattered across the ship's deck. This was Peter's favourite colour- it made his belly warm: it was just like looking at the sun through golden cellophane. He couldn't do it anymore or his eyeballs would pop out-that's what his mum said. When his mum came up the stairs, yelling, 'Peter! Dinner!' he would curl around the bowl and press his cheek to the cool wall of peter's world. At first peter would dart to the other side, but slowly the fish would wriggle back towards him until they touched eyeballs through the glass. Everything else was black. When the door creaked he covered the dolphin's mouth...' (Publication abstract)

'A fly landed on Ted's eyelid. It took off when he flicked his wrist. The fly and his eye together hovered over the page. The page was dotted with half-formed verses and most of these were scratched out by his blue biro, which he was now attempting to swat the fly with. One of the lines on the page read: There are no roses in heaven...' (Publication abstract)

'Our last cow was getting thinner. Touching her stomach, I could see why I had to go. She wouldn't give much meat and could barely fill the bucket with milk. None of our men had found quartz in the creek for years. They had given up searching. But still we would not move on. This is our land and we will die before we leave. I would be a bride before my fifteenth year and my father could have an extra portion of milk...'(Publication abstract)

'Cornelius Kurt sits up in the hospital bed and says: The souls are escaping...' (Publication abstract)