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.
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...
A short history of guns in America
The first firearm was the Chinese fire lance, a gunpowder-filled bamboo tube first depicted on a tenth-century silk banner from the Gansu Province in Western China. Early incarnations of the fire lance were used mainly for shock value in melees – the weapon little more than a glorified firework attached to a spear.
The day after the storm
AT FIRST, THE black clouds gathered as if in contemplation. Like a herd of dark thoughts, they quickly gave...
The memory clinic
THE PROCEDURE WOULD be painless, the white-smocked facilitator assured her. Lee sat almost catatonic as the translucent wires were...
The Closure Company
THEIR SIGNS USED a distinctive shade of blue. It was a colour they’d patented, like Tiffany Blue, though the...
A woman alone
Dedicated to Susan-Gaye Anderson THERE’S NO POINT making it up. An eminent Australian historian, a woman, once said of an...
Snake of Light
Listen to Loki Liddle reading ‘Snake of light’. HE SOUND OF buzzing filled the dodgy motel room, bouncing off the dirty tiles and...
Preparing for the inevitable: Five states of mind
Griffith Review · Joshua Lobb reading Preparing For The Inevitable from Griffith Review 72: States of Mind You have ten...
