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.
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...
At the subway station
In a world of cunning shadesI’m the only sleuth. I hop on the train bound for a futureI’ve been hired...
Autumn
Tsunami-hit, shoved over at a tilt, they’ve left the bashed old kovil’s god-thronged tower standing, tallish, beyond the new one built to face, this time, becalm, the ocean’s power…
