Tide
A collection of poetry and fiction from the Faculty of Creative Arts' creative writing program
Starting Over
Jessica and I loved to play with worms when we were kids. We’d pluck the fat ones from our dad’s award-winning worm farm and allow them to infiltrate the mud pies we molded into ice-cream tubs and then baked in the sun....
East of Westerbine
Toby fumbled through the stack of envelopes in his leather pouch as Mr Jessop Cole waited, arms folded across his wide chest. Toby remained just outside the yard of the Cole property, his knees bent awkwardly as he leaned back to catch his pouch upon his belly....
Degustation
My husband’s tiny, a baby, compared to me. He wasn’t even born when I had my first kiss. Even stranger, he’s short and thin and round-cheeked. He can’t grow a moustache. He sleeps curled around himself like a foetus: tiny and gilled. When we have sex he’s a desperate sucking mouth, greedy hands.....
Kung fu, lies and videotape
JOHN AND ANNE’S LOUNGEROOM – DAY
ANNE is cleaning an immaculate room. A knock sounds. Anne opens the front door partway to.....
Absolution
The sky is a baptismal font.
The people of Cronulla
offer up hand massages to the Lord.....
12 o'clock sky
It was only after dying that I realised I had all these blank pages left over. My face was still pale and smooth then. I had never bothered to grow any lines or to smile. I didn’t think to create those little tracks or worlds inside me—the kind you take with you when you die. .....
The ocean knows this
Your skin more yellow
where I can’t see it,
face like plasticine
your mouth
a hollow carved out for sound....
The lover’s promise
Daniel East
love had come to rest below my window and i resolved myself to let him in — for he looked ragged and wild , well in need of the rum i offered ( a slick inch of urine in the tumbler , neat — my own with a squeeze of lemon ) also there was the matter of the dove whose heart i had recently come to acquire .
at first , she had lain in the dirt with her cotton-whites around her shoulders ( as often i see ballerinas’ legs in windows lingering like lightless lamps ) a curve of her down in the grass sparse and dry and i thinking ‘ perhaps she dances for me ’ she giving me no indication ( such a sly little one ) keeping to her dance , folded in an ivory silence .
that night i dreamed oddly warm ( for my room is cold where the wind rips through ) and i wound her clockwork round and round , and in a wooden box feathered we danced until dawn candled us .
in the morning i took a cupful of rice and simmered it in cream , cloves and brown sugar — and i too lay it in the dirt like worn snow . she came to rest there once more and stopped , a blue clarinet from her hard lips , the wind in her white collar .
love stretched two thick fingers ( the nails black ) down his throat and a diamond of moth trembled along them shaking her soft furs , coming to alight on my upturned palm.
love nodded , stood to leave , but i :
‘ her heart — i need to know ’
and he sighed , nodding all the while , motioning for another rum if i was up . from under the loose board , i drew the thin , tin case — inside , a lump as black as liver , the wet flap of blood i found on my sill . the moth fell looping from me to it and at her touch , the heart again began to beat .
finishing his drink , love said —
‘ what she has given you are free to eat ’
that it would be like almonds , and drier than i would expect , pulling the door to , shivering though the air was warm . the moth , that fine , soft storm twitched her feelers in anxious circles . so keeping to my promise , i closed the tin case and put it back below the boards — two days hence , the dove lay in the dirt .
what else to do ? i plucked her ; seasoned the skin with salt ; roasted garlic in her chest ; sucked the brown flesh from her ankles . the moth wailed for three days before the curse died clear away . still i miss her dearly .
and in the yellow days of summer , when i think of love’s obscene suggestion , i take the dove heart and clank it to and fro , my consummated flame , to and fro