My mother disliked the sea

About the author

Peter Skrzynecki

Peter Skrzynecki is an award-winning author of twenty books of poetry and prose. He is an adjunct associate professor at Western Sydney University.

More from this edition

The day Khet Thi was tortured to death

Poetryafter Lou Reed I dreamed – I was the poet laureate of Naypyitaw, the Abode of Generals. The Generalissimo was a poet too. So was the Generalissimo’s American cocker spaniel. To...

FictionNow 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.