Bad News for Spring - Nick Hadgelias

Nick is 26 years old.  He is currently completing a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing at Melbourne University after finishing a bachelor degree at The Queensland College of Art Film School in which he specialised in writing for the screen.

Bad News for Spring

Brittle shards of colour spring and splinter

stretched out across a glassy flickering surface

light, fire and metal glinting

wood, dust and concrete lurch

into the air

defying what should be

held for an instant

searing and bright

before it melts

tracing the optic nerve

to the back of the brain

to wither

in memory

I pitch forward from the couch

and go to the kitchen

to cup water from the tap

and consider my sudden and unseasonable hay fever

skinless or battered - Brigitte Lewis

skinless or battered

the more layers I pull from my skin

the more inadequate I feel

cos I've found another way

to beat myself black and blue

more proof of my lack lustre expression

more reason to continue the self flagellation

cos I've never known another way,

always gotta push harder

spit further

talk louder

build my fort stronger

and all this self introspection

has got me side stepping joy

in the name of dismantling

this habitual pattern

encore

my dark mind roars

sit down stay still yells the soul within

the child she wants daddy

and the teenager

she wants to leave her clothes on the floor

fuck the pain away

touch god with her fingers

call mary back in

pull heaven down to earth

turn the music up loud

and forget her name

was ever sketched across that certificate

cos she's been building a self in their reflection

ever since she took her first breath

never learned to uncover her own face

speak her own sounds

until this moment

this present

this blank space

this right             now

this exhale.

Windmills - Daniel Roper

Daniel Roper is 25 years old, studying science at RMIT. His hobbies include, among others, photography and a good bottle of red wine.

View from the Great Victorian Spa Bath - Corey Wakeling

Corey is 24 years old and a writer living in Melbourne. His work has appeared in major newspapers, literary journals, forthcoming in anthologies Nth Degree: Australasian university writers, and EWF's The Reader.

View from the Great Victorian Spa Bath

It is waking up in

twenty-second intervals,

this outburst at 2.30AM.

Explosions have begun indoors.

You could take a child up

by the feet and shake them,

this relieves them of their

pilfer toys, found change. A

Melburnian child wearing a

blank scarf and black shoes

must look at the museum

aspect of Swanston Street

between intervals. Thudding

black laptop. Secrets of beeches

imported from the Peak District.

Secret architectural arrangements.

Local councillors pondering poetry,

for them the bobbing of a child upside

down. Melburnian children want

Snowy Mountains. Newman College

wants soft Snowy Mountains and

skis of Styrofoam. Whitley College

wants the marriage of Snowy Mountains.

Museum journalist Eyjafjallajökull wants

a broadsheet feature, a lost city, its wise

tenderness studied.

We had better

learn from Tasmania and invite the

beech tree incumbency, its ever shifting

nocturnal opinions. Peak District trees slide

into position like chess pieces. Eyjafjallajökull

is matriarchal from afar. Queen with Rook. The indefensible

offensive. Peak district locals close in their fireplaces

with found ash, betray their villages to Nottingham,

Birmingham, Manchester, and Stoke. There is

an abominable silence on the road to Winking Rock.

Village Victorians light their houses on fire as the

floods and locusts beat through the little pastures,

they take on Melbourne mostly, but some Ballarat,

a few beach combers Geelong. Imagine Eyjafjallajökull’s

joy at all of us boiling in a hot spring spa bath.

Counting the great discount, soothing the great eczema,

winking the great wink with a reddening, gaping blue eye.

Eye of the Storm - Sam Ryan

 In the eye of the storm, all is calm. Despite the dark storms around it, it remains stubbornly clear and empty, a hole in the dark for whoever wishes to look down upon us. 

Sam Ryan, aged 22, started experimenting with photography when he was 16. He enjoys trying to capture nature, especially sunsets and the sky.

Infinitive Stem - Nicola Trethowan

Nicola Trethowan (23) is anallegorist, speculator, and epistemological
centrifuge from Melbourne. Her novel, Spectacle City, is intended for
publication in 2011. [http://spectaclecity.wordpress.com].


Infinitive Stem

– over which,

as Moses had assigned 

     to ordain his seed

so did     the poets invoke

the churches veil

the prepositions     distance

the critics desire

the suspects counterfeit

the perverts discover

the analysts diagnose

the verbs qualify

the temples divide

the internet consume

the alchemists poison

the melancholic

terminate

& their eyes did blind them

no star having fallen

into legible script,

I  trip.

Souls Watching - Eiburu Shikari Kimura

 It is said that when you visit the Fushimi Inari, and walk down its long hallway, you can feel a prickle of sensation crawling over your spine. From young, we are told that the souls of the people whose names are inscribed upon those orange poles watch us. A thousand souls watch, even as tourists and locals alike admire the vivid orange that draws people in. It is said that they watch upon our lives and protect us, even as we watch over the remnants of their life, forever locked in the orange-smeared wood.

Eiburu is a 19 year old, creative-minded student from Monash University in Melbourne. He is currently working on a musical project with his sister and girlfriend. He enjoys photography, and explores the dark side of culture worldwide.