egg and frog

flash: Whenua

Whenua There were three of us already planted in the backyard: Wiremu, Mataī, and me.  ‘Why am I the smallest?’ I ask Mama, looking at my tree. ‘Because you were the youngest, Aroha. Don’t you worry, you’ll grow in time.’ She pushes my hair away from my eyes, and smiles. But not like she used

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Poetry. Cotquean, by Christopher Jones. Image: a pair of boxing gloves suspended from a knitting needle and thread. In the gloves, the silhouette of a man and his son.

poetry: Cotquean

Cotquean I’m sewing up tears in my boxing gear: a needle, black thread and bachelor stitches. I’m cross-legged on the bathroom floor while Pharaoh splashes in the tub beside me, a pink and laughing treasure two years long. I ran his bath, undressed his happy body. Now I wash his hair, speak quietly through the

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Fiction. Ice Cream, by Harry Dobbs. Image: the silhouette of an ice cream with an American flag stuck in it. Inside the ice cream are silhouettes of a couple and three military jets.

fiction: Ice Cream

Ice Cream Reading time: about 10 minutes I turn and see Blake struggle up the pot-holed street. Directly above him, an old woman smokes on a balcony, her bare arms resting on its metal railing. Blake looks like a tourist. An American tourist. Which he is. Basketball vest, baggy shorts, battered trainers. A back-to-front baseball

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Poetry. Bookmarks, by Colin Dardis. Image: the silhouette of a book with a variety of bookmarks poking out the top, including a pen, a feather, a ticket, a pair of scissors and a comb.

poetry: Bookmarks

Bookmarks It might be a receipt, a bus ticket, or if you need that ticket to return on, the foil paper ripped from a half-packet of gum, an old hairclip, something humdrum, a pen, or even, in desperation, a tissue, slightly used (do not judge them) or whatever else can be foraged from the handbag’s

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Flash Fiction. Before The Show, by Marcelo Medone. Image: a woman lies on a theatre stage beneath the cosmos.

flash: Before The Show

Before the show Reading time: about 2-3 minutes You will walk slowly into the rehearsal room of the theatre, you will turn on the lights hanging from the ceiling, you will contemplate yourself full-length in the large wall mirror, you will see a beautiful woman in her thirties, with features as firm as her character,

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