'The bell rings. It's recess. Kids swarm the front office, looking for confiscated phones and basketballs. Some request to see teachers. The office ladies mostly ignore them. One boy stomps to my desk and addresses me as 'Oi! Miss' before being ordered to sit by one of the vice principals. He slumps down in one of the plush empty chairs outside my office, defeated. Accused of starting a punch on, he's sullen. 'I didn't do it,' he insists loudly. He sinks down so low in the chair so that his waist hangs over the edge and his feet lay sprawled on the patterned carpet at odd angles.' (Publication abstract)
'I am drunk on public transport again. A woman sits a few seats away from me, head resting on the pole behind her. Her face is a barcode, reads like this: forehead, eyebrows, eyeliner, the rim of her shut lids, and then the tears slipping from underneath. She has headphones in. I think she's crying to the music. She looks whole and beautiful, and I feel bad for thinking this. The tears keep slipping out. There is a man standing in the aisle who is more interested in flexing his biceps in the fluorescent lights than comforting the beautiful crying woman. I am angry at him for not caring for a few minutes, before I get distracted by his biceps. He gets off at the same stop as me and I fantasise about him following me home. He doesn't.
'When I get home I steal one of my housemate's Zooper Dooper iceblocks and eat it in the shower. I stay there until the hot water runs out...' (Publication abstract)
(Publication abstract)
'The typhoon starts with a murmur. It finds us in the sky, waiting. Then, as we leave the South China Sea, it starts to scream. Inside the plane there is silence. It waxes and wanes, stretching across carpeted floors...' (Publication abstract)
'In BIalystok, Poland, during the summer of 1906, a procession of men dressed in gowns walked solemnly through the city centre to commemorate the building of a new Russian-Orthodox cathedral. Though the town was mostly Jewish, the atmosphere between Jews and goyim had been strained since Pesach the previous year, when local gossip began to spread that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to make matzoh for the holy day. The police chief, Derkacz, had sent the police to stop Russian soldiers from attacking Jews in the marketplace. He was the seventh man to have held the post of police chief that year. The other six had been murdered on orders from the Russian government, or had stepped down from the position out of fear. Derkacz had heard the stories from nearby villages of what was happening to the Jews there. He told the Jews in Bialystok, 'It will not happen here.' My great-great-grandmother (I do not know her name) heard him say, 'Over my dead body.' He was murdered in June on the orders of the Russian commissar.' (Publication abstract)
(Publication abstract)
'Today I messed up a parallel park and ruined my entire life...' (Publication abstract)