Journal
Articles
Baba
A friend suggests a psychologist, but my grandmother was a house witch, her mother the thirteenth child of the thirteenth...
upstart crowe
I was reading Shakespeare on my phone & then this rose started blooming in front of me as...
Moonshot
in the tenth set he sent the tennis ball on an interstellar galaxy quest, a sudden outburst which seemingly served no...
The trouble with eternity
I had a dream about the afterlife: I died quite unexpectedly Although it is, of course, to be expected, And I materialised...
Moon man
After Elizabeth Venn He circles the room five times, refusing to believe he’s resistible. I tell myself I won’t tilt for his...
Witchy women
The ’90s saw a trend of witchy, occult or otherwise supernatural women on TV. Sabrina was joined by Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, gracing our screens with characters who took control using abilities unknown to man – and men. These shows formed part of the girl (magic) power movement.
Blak humour
When I use ‘Blak’ to describe Aboriginal humour, not ‘black humour’, I’m embracing it as a distinct comedic style. This choice makes it clear that Aboriginal Australian ‘Blak humour’ is its own unique genre, in line with self-determination and ownership that First Nations artist Destiny Deacon speaks about.
Animals in wartime
Tyhra starts hiding in the cellar. Like many people and animals in these frontline regions, her days are defined by the sounds of war. She may not understand what’s happening or why, but she feels that life now is about trying to stay safe.
My matrescence
Women have looked to their mothers and grandmothers for eternity as they’ve learnt how to mother. However, the ear-piercing noise of today’s digital world has interfered with the passing down of our family’s ways of mothering.
Queer in tooth and claw
The colourful clownfish is a sequential hermaphrodite – while clownfish are all born male, they carry male and female sex organs, and the change from male to female is essential to the species’ strict social hierarchy. The female is at the top of this hierarchy and is the largest fish in a group. The largest male in the group accompanies her; together they make the breeding pair.
Six words
On the first day I arrived at the inquest, my friend Charandev Singh said to me that coronial inquests exist to alibi state actors for the deaths they’ve caused, the lives the state has previously taken, and to protect the state for all the future lives it will steal. Every single one of these agents of the state is complicit in these alibis, too.
Joker in the pack
Status itself is a little like a riddle: a code to be cracked, a hand in which you can’t see all the cards. Unless you’re Batman, however, the stakes for solving riddles tend to be comfortingly low, whereas the pressures of deciphering status can occupy a far more consequential role in our lives (it’s all fun and games until somebody loses their cultural capital).
