Featured in
- Published 20241105
- ISBN: 978-1-923213-01-2
- Extent: 196 pp
- Paperback, ebook, PDF
Though he lives in a rundown unit
above a busy intersection,
the pyjama man
imagines that the sounds of the traffic
are the waves of the ocean.
It is not automobiles
that are passing by his window;
it is the crashing of waves into the shore.
He finds the sound of the ocean therapeutic
and becomes a man of peace.
His friends tell him it is the traffic,
the relentless sound of the traffic,
that has driven him mad,
that has caused this fantasy.
Their negativity
makes him even more determined
to believe the delusion.
Share article
About the author
Damian Balassone
Damian Balassone’s writing has appeared in a variety of Australian and international publications, including The New York Times, The Australian, Light, Abridged, The Spectator,...
More from this edition
Believe it or not
IntroductionCultural critic Chuck Klosterman reminds us that ‘any present-tense version of the world is unstable. What we currently consider to be true – both objectively and subjectively – is habitually provisional.’
Baba
Poetry A friend suggests a psychologist, but my grandmother was a house witch, her mother the thirteenth child of the thirteenth child. Knock twice on the cards...
Under a spell
Non-fiction IT COSTS £3 to visit the gateway to hell. Midsummer and I’m somewhere on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, staring down the black...
