Featured in

  • Published 20190806
  • ISBN: 9781925773798
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.
Anton Chekov in a letter to AS Gruzinsky, 1 November 1889

OUTSIDE THE CHICKEN shop, a policeman shows me his gun. He shows me because I ask. I am thirteen and learning that men say yes when I ask them for things, and so I am learning to ask. I think I am learning that I have a fearless mouth.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Mirror, mirror

I have lost my face. This is not a metaphor; I no longer recognise myself in mirrors. I know the facts: I’m wearing the face I’ve always worn, the same muscle, the same scaffolding of bone – but recognition is a different order of knowing. My sense of kinship is gone. I stare and a stranger stares back. 

More from this edition

The trauma of discipline

Memoir THE TILES IN the kitchen were white, with a grey diamond pattern. The grout was a light greying brown – I’m sure it had been...

Mountain ashed

EssayI’M STANDING IN the shifting forest in the muted light of dusk. Above me, a tall tree with a vast tapering trunk stretches its...

Five years is too long

GR OnlineIN APRIL 2015, the Australian media is awash with stories of Australians in international prisons for drug trafficking. The death penalty is a hot...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.