Before I forget again

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Mother-daughter trip

PoetryNana B and Zeide once ice-skated on a lake in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland. ‘I was made for Poland,’ says Mum, as Brisbane roils with heat....

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Non-fictionIn The Secret Life of Lobsters (2004), Trevor Corson describes how, before the lobster’s status had sufficiently improved for affluent urbanites to desire its meat, ‘lobster’ was used derogatorily to describe British redcoats during the American Revolution and, later, dupes or fools in general. Which brings me to Jordan Peterson.

Divine dis/connection

Non-fictionMY FAMILY HAVE always been wary around animals, especially in the home (I could have written ‘non-human animals’, but a stark separation of human from animal is truer to them). My brother and I have changed because of animal encounters in share houses and via intimate others, and we now each live with a partner who likes cats (I ‘have’ one cat; he ‘has’ two). But our parents have remained the same.

Fish

FictionHe hasn’t caught one in twelve years or more, not since just before Ritchie – Hayley’s oldest – was born. The deboning alone can take half a morning and you have to strip that tail to its cartilage very carefully because there’s a layer of green resin, bitter. In small doses it ruins the meat; poisonous if you eat too much.