Featured in

  • Published 20230801
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-86-3
  • Extent: 200pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

On the bleached beach
of café seats, he’s drenched, hair
slicked, tarnished as tines
pulled up from a shipwreck, save
a naughty part:
silver forelock a hook
swaying as he sucks the wet
C that is oyster and draws
champagne from
a bucket, making naked
ice gasp. O Daddy
to beauties on Boulevard
Saint-Germain, smirking
or hurried, returning
on long legs, secretive
as mermaids. Could they all
be his daughters?
Washed up through green-
peopled traffic as he
sits spread, avid, the littlest
last clicking shut her clamshell
compact before a Fiat’s
beep beep, bending to kiss
a vessel-webbed cheek,
her sisters, off searching for
princes, perpetually undressed
by gaze and gaga heat.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Paula Bohince

Paula Bohince is the author of three collections of poetry. Her work has been published in Australian Book Review, The Australian, The New Yorker...

More from this edition

'An idle moment' by Carody Culver

An idle moment

IntroductionIn 2008, Finnish performance artist Pilvi Takala embarked on an audacious project called The Trainee. For one month, she worked as a marketing intern at the global accounting firm Deloitte. Instead of carrying out the usual responsibilities expected of this role, Takala did…nothing. 

In the fullness of time

Non-fictionOur devices and data are more than extensions of our physical bodies. The so-called ‘human-centric’ approach to designing wearable and carriable devices means that they disrupt traditional divisions between work and leisure, production and consumption. It’s difficult not to feel the incursion of work-logics into leisure times and spaces as normal. Stretched for time, couples, families and friendship groups are starting to organise themselves using tools like Slack, Jira, Trello and Asana – that is, in the same way as workplaces. 

Etc.

FictionTogether we were drawn mechanically across the road, boredom/fate reeling us in. The lawn sprawled over the grey-brick kerb. The house was painted green. Sellotaped to the windows were rows of pressed aster. The feeling of something too large to explain was heavy in the air. The door squeaked, swinging open, the main door ajar behind it, and through the gap we glimpsed a white hallway, a pile of discarded shoes on one side.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.