Welcome to GR Online, a new 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.
In 2023, we’re delighted to be publishing three regular online contributors: Jumaana Abdu, Sam Elkin and Amber Gwynne. In addition to work by these three stellar writers, we’ll also be publishing occasional pieces by other contributors throughout the year. Stay tuned!
Before I forget again
I am a ceramic horse in kintsugi fields. Shards shred my tongue to gold rivers. Cracked and crazed – from fire gallops beast. Memory slips lapis lazuli. I break curses, gather spells. Nudge fresh letters in water troughs – watch words bob – shiny new apples...
A perfectly ordinary dachshund observes the problem of being
Breathing your small inauspicious body almost into incomprehension, supine and crouched, lost to the world, or to that portion only dachshund...
Help wanted
The opening said no training required; the slaughterer’s tasks are two: stun and slaughter. With a third parenthetical: Remove the organs and the waste as needed....
Anemone
Lady, in this heavy light you show tender: waving your insides outside, buffeted by the sea’s old heave ho. Nobody calls out...
metanoia
the book holds the horse – rustling in there, taking pages between lips, rubbing upper lip across them, nostrils twin jets of...
felix and jango
two black cats patrol our street felix and jango I can’t tell them apart when I see one of them walking past I...
A new animal
My son has made friends with the daddy-long-legs under the kitchen bench. Each morning I am freshly summoned to ‘um ook at em.’ Come look...
Their presence
Straight away you’re taller, sprung firm andspry by their ecstatic vocal runs and upscaling,by their tripping lightly over pages...
Sonnet for the weekend
Glory to God for long weekends,for lattes served by obsequious baristas,sunnied eggs and bacon with the crispy ends,for an...
History in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
Because they spawn near each otherdiscover one another’s dog-scoutsSparta and Gandhi are contemporariesthe Eurotas river and the Gangesmuddying into...
Louche
On the bleached beachof café seats, he’s drenched, hairslicked, tarnished as tinespulled up from a shipwreck, savea naughty part:silver...
Just like the day before and the day
after and the day beyond thatday and all the days,chairs stack up in silentrestaurants, bicycle couriers carryon past hire...
