Soft Cunts and Salty Sirens: Finding a Space to Nurture Your Identity

Just around the corner from Ipswich train station is an intimate bar that serves as a gallery, workshop, and live music venue, as well as a reminder that intersectional, inclusive spaces can be found everywhere. I’d come to see a punk music show but discovered a beautiful expression of the joy of community. The walls […]

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GOMA’S Wonderstruck

GOMA’s newest exhibition, Wonderstruck, is a presentation of artworks by major Australian and international artists as a journey through six themes of wonder. Officially opened with a vibrant two-day festival (June 28–29), the show is perfectly timed for school holidays. Curators Tamsin Cull and Laura Mudge describe it as a call to notice the awe […]

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POEM: Hard of Hearing

I deafened the moon out of orbit when I perched by your door, so I could only figure the shadow of Stitch on your coconut fibre mat. It was 1 am, the world had shifted to tomorrow, and I had no bars- so I pecked.  Your musk met me before you did- Summer holds both […]

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POEM: 15 – Wash

So here we are at last, our final dinner  taken ‘neath dripping, blurry candlelight  Across the table, through the sandstorm, you seek my eye Words are grains of sand, falling  Words that have already met with silence  For the sake of an easy farewell when before you rose from my arms and were gone … […]

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POEM: Dig – Free Form

Dig.  That’s the first thing they say to me,  When I wake in that muddy field,  Dig.  They press a shovel to my chest,  It’s rough wood, heavy and cruel in my new hands.  Dig.  They say   once more,  I do not know  anything else but –  Dig.  The earth had birthed     […]

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A Message from the Stars

Shot off into space, the message coasts on rays emitted from the sun, radiating out deep into the cosmos. Ones and zeros, carefully contained in individual photons, rising and falling in the waves of black. The message dances through space, ducking and diving and swirling around. Jumping from place to place, shifting from wave to […]

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POEM: Passport X

Between F and M  And warnings that   Deviation  May betray my safety in certain countries,  I choose ‘other’,  Unspecified,  Undetermined.  I *am* other.  I am outside and both  And nothing all at once and  Fluctuating // deviating  From expectations:  From the ‘safe’ route.  X is who I am.   I am willing to forfeit my ease […]

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Coming Out: A Memoir

My heart races, thumping a staccato rhythm through my chest. My palms slicken and sweat seeps through the fibres of my t-shirt. Mum and dad sit across the dining table from me. Our dirty plates sit in front of us almost cleared of the meat and three-veg that was mum’s specialty. I had barely tasted […]

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