detainee
Merlinda Bobis

how easily a speck of bird
shatters the evenness of skies —

she peers, stunned, from cell 22

awed that such dumb minuteness
can shake the earth

Merlinda Carullo Bobis is a contemporary Philippine Australian writer and academic. She is the author of award-winning titles including Summer Was a Fast Train without Terminals (1998) and White Turtle published in USA under the title, The Kissing. Her latest novel is Banana Heart Summer. Currently, she

Mother-of-All
Lucy Sussex

Each time I sit down at the word processor for a spot of writing, the machine gets more and more reluctant to boot up, until I have to kick it almost to death before I can use it. So we summon a techno-freak friend, who opens it up and prys inside, uttering a stream of incomprehensible jargon, or so I think, until one familiar word bowls across my room to where I sit quietly spinning a yarn, not on the computer, but the oakwood wheel.
‘– Mother

The Boys
Lesley Higgs and Jenny Kelly

These stories tell how two little boys made their way into our hearts and forever changed our lives.

Lesley’s story:
Our boys were born in a haystack on a vineyard in Moriac, Victoria, and for some unknown reason, their mum took off for greener pastures when they were about four weeks old.  Jenny and I had been thinking about a pet for a while and had been mulling over the thought of a labrador or cocker spaniel. But we were a bit

Laurene Kelly

I get a fright in the night
when I hear the trains go by
It is because they are carrying bodies
carrying bodies, bodies of trees
they are murdering in the night
and in the day,
our trees, our spirits
the death trains rattle by.

Laurene Kelly has worked with abused children and women in refuges for many years and now works part time as a carer of children. She is the author of a trilogy of novels, I Started Crying Monday, The Crowded Beach and Still Waving. Her

I Dream of Horses
Julie Copeland

When was the first dream? The first horse? Aged three, sitting in the gutter outside our shop at the top of Alma Road, up from St Kilda Junction, watching and waiting for the baker’s horse, Ginger. A chestnut, of course. My little finger’s still crooked, because one morning, through no fault of his own, the patient cart horse bit through it, along with the apple pieces my mother always gave me to hand him.
Just two years ago, I lost the top