Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Welcome
FROM THE TIME Kurt Talker disappeared, presumed drowned, people began to claim him. They named his parents, his extended...
Americano Sal
It was always busy there in Palermo. During a snow shower I’d sit in the cafés, small corner net connections. Sometimes the weather was a little heavy – I’d kick my boots clean of ice at the entrance, umbrella heavy with sleet. The man you paid to use the internet would be singing in Farsi; a woman would speak in hushed tones in the cubicle. Sometimes not so hushed. Talking to her family on the other side of the world. Where maybe it was snowing, too. And together they could listen to each other. Together in the snow they could talk.
The menaced assassin
SOPHIE STANDS IN front of the painting, flexing her toes. She pushes one heel off the ground and then...
Wildflowers
Listen to contributor Peggy Frew read her fiction ‘Wildflowers’. IT HAD TAKEN Meg a long time to convince Nina. Many lengthy phone calls....
Emily presents
MEG IS ALLOWED onto the tarmac to watch the unloading. It is a vast, empty space at this time...
Reflecting light
DAYS FROM NOW, when the ship pitches so hard Jesse is woken being tossed from the bed, he’ll remember...
Walk
HE WALKED DOWN the seething streets of Fortitude Valley. It was 2.30 in the morning of a Saturday night and...
Vavan
LOOK AT THAT lamppost by the newspaper kiosk. No, not the one where the bike is locked. The other...
Pidgin
Now Pidgin didn’t say much to nobody, but he was different around his feathered friends, and also with me, coming to overlook my human bits. Plus I never poked fun at him the way others did, about the slowness, the bung eyes or walking like a string was tied from his ankle to the back of his nog – you know, pidgin-like – or being good with nothing else but bird things, which never holds much bargain for others, and they’ll want to tease and knuckle what they don’t get. Truth is I was in love with Pidgin, not that he knew – though it could have been mooch, since he was always calling me up.
Displaced
THE DELICATE RED filigree of the sea fan coral looked like alveoli in lungs, Clare thought as she kicked...
Camelopard
MOST OF THE time, I know I’m human. There’s a buttoned flap to fuss with when it’s time to eat,...
The open-plan office
DR X TREMBLED with excitement. The hall was quiet, deserted, but behind every closed door she knew that there...
