Issue 5: Feral

Issue 5 is animalism – fierce and vulnerable, dirty and wounded. Climb into everything feral with us, and watch where you step.

We’re privileged to release these voices, both new and familiar, of writers from Aotearoa.

~~~

Featuring short stories from Kaia Costanza, Phoebe Robertson, Ruby-Rose Whitcher, Freya Gardener, Jemma Richardson, and Theo Coles; poetry from Jasmine Liu, Sage Garrett, Hebe Kearney, Freya Turnbull, olive bly, and Zia Ravenscroft; and an essay from Emma Ravens.

Cover design by Madeline McGovern.

Page art by Chloe Marsters and Laura Hern.

Cover art by Chloe Marsters.

Read the issue 5: Feral PDF (copy and paste into your browser): https://www.circularpublishing.co.nz/s/circular-issue-5_feral.pdf

• Editors’ note ~ Madeline, Brooke, and Stephanie

  Kia ora koutou,

  Are you tired of the drudgery of working life and your $7 lattes? Would you rather be a creature in the woods right now? circular issue 5: Feral is here to help. 

  We are immensely proud to present our fifth issue – something more raw, dirty and wild than we’ve touched on before. We were a little nervous envisaging the concept of a feral issue. Would it be too much? Eventually, we leaned into it. Sometimes too much is exactly the right amount. 

  We had a lot of inspiration for this issue – from our favourite nostalgic YA to certain BookTok alumni, poetry collections old and new, to recent music releases by Lorde and Florence + The Machine. While these influences can surely be seen scattered through the issue, the result is something new altogether. Feral took on a life of its own; deep vulnerability is just as present as projected tones of animalism. Despite its moments of humour and bravado, issue 5 is a wounded beast.

  In 2025, the world feels a bit feral. Perhaps that sounds brazen, but when the news feels nuclear and the state of the world routinely wakes you up in a cold sweat, and when, regardless, you have to go to work and pay your rent and look after your body and see your friends and think about your career trajectory and the likelihood that robots will replace you and touch grass and do your dishes and reply to emails and not fall into the pit of despair… it all starts to get unhinged. It’s worth noting that while working on this issue, we as a collective have been undergoing many changes, both personal and professional, which have evoked a sense of the ~feral~ in us, including one of our editors moving overseas. 

  Once again, thank you to all our submitters and everyone who has followed along and supported our journal. Your continued vulnerability, humour and insights make circular what it is, and we are eternally grateful. 

  Issue 5 features creatures, pizzas, haircuts, sweat, gardens, grief, blood, drugs, maternity, ribbons, mirrors, toenails, moshpits, winter sex, matcha, undergrowth, Ribs by Lorde, gremlins, bravery, animalism, routines, bruises, spit, cranberries and cross country.

  So, climb into everything feral with us, and watch where you step.

  Ngā mihi,

  Madeline, Brooke, and Stephanie—editors

• Animal ~ Jasmine Liu

  I am three fingers deep in a lamb aorta,

  it’s too late to stop anyways. 

  They’ll be stained red cause Miss doesn’t believe in gloves

  & isn’t it ironic?

  the heart of a warm-blooded animal lies cold, 

  cleaved in half on the lid of a Tip Top ice cream container.

  Eager – dull scalpels tug at muscle: 

  1. observe the septum

  2. compare the thickness of the right and left sides

  3. try plucking the heart strings

  I dare you to lick it.

  In primary school I’d run the cross country, 

  cutting through the dew-drenched field, 

  my socks wet merging with mud,

  the sun, fuzzy and white

  turns my breath metallic. 

  You only need your legs to carry you, 

  far away from

  a plastic milk jug splitting against the wall, I watch

  edits of Possession to Ptolemaea 

  at night, I practice screaming 

  in the mirror I open my mouth and eyes wide

  & wait for sound to escape, 

  the house is so quiet, you’d think my family disappear when they sleep.

  I was told to not bite the hand that feeds me

  but when I have dreams of eating you, 

  you don’t tell me to stop.

  Just eat until you’re full

  & I pause to look at your face.

  —

  Jasmine Liu is a high school student from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She is a finalist for the 2025 National Schools Poetry Award, and you can find her poems in the Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025 and Re-Draft 2024. She is currently trying to remember her dream from last Tuesday. @juicyfigtree

• A Sunday routine ~ Kaia Costanza

  I’ve lost track of how many times I swore I wouldn’t waste expensive oatmeal shampoo on something that tries to bite my hand off.

  I careen down the hallway, arms covered in suds and blood. Serves me right for trying to have a nice Sunday. A relaxing Sunday. The sort of Sunday that lets a body settle back into being a person and smelling faintly of roses, before the claws of the churning world have another go of turning it into Christmas party decorations. 

  You don’t understand. I had a novel with a nice crisp bookmark. Clean socks. I had iced matcha.

  I fling myself into the living room in time to witness a shattering crash, and a puddle of green spreading across cream carpet like an island rising from the sea. A swish of drenched fur creates an outlying atoll off the east coast. I don’t bother coaxing or soothing it – I’m too tired and too angry and why is this my problem anyway? Why didn’t anyone tame this for me, or teach me how to take care of it without getting hurt? Why can’t I give it to someone who deserves it? 

  I don’t yell either. My teeth feel like shattering but I’m trying to learn not to yell. The sodden creature in the corner can’t help being what it is. Can’t help that it knew enough about being sharp and fast to save my life, but not enough about carpets to save my bond.

  It shivers like a leaf, can’t decide whether to hiss or cower. I lunge at it with the softest towel I have and it streaks out, trailing oatmeal shampoo and matcha. So there I am with my wet socks and bleeding arms next to a chewed-up screen door, looking like an idiot.

  The carpet isn’t really mine anyway. I’m not sure anything is. Even my fingernails are just keratin borrowed from ancient shellfish. Possible reasons for this include:

  • I don’t believe in propertarianism.

  • I don’t have the money to buy instead of rent.

  • Last year when I decided enough was enough, I read fifteen self-help books in a week, and gave up attachments, screen time, and sugar. 

  I wake up groggy and resentful, with a sour taste on my tongue. And on my mind, the thought that I’m running out of time to become UN Secretary-General by the time I’m 30. I wash my face. The satin-soft sleep-creature that’s been whispering dark fantasies into my ears all night swallows its own dreams and zips itself back into my skin. Squirms as I tame my unruly body and ensconce it in clothes and the rulyness the traffic outside is howling for.

  I’ve always loved to tie knots that were more tangle than topology and that’s what the garden is becoming. Sometimes I think new vines creep out the back of my head and through the window while I’m cooking. I can’t follow any one of them from tip to root, and they’ve all started becoming each other like me and the novel I’m reading, like me and my best friends, like me and my mom.

  I go to the woods after work to see what I can trade. But someone hooked the fairy ring up to Chat-GPT and it says bits of string, handfuls of shells, and flyers for poetry readings I didn’t attend are no longer legal tender. My soul is already spoken for and my name won’t even buy a carton of eggs. 

  Something fast and full of teeth runs beside me all the way home, its quick hooves sending stones skittering as it snatches tufts of the wind like manifestos – 

  The nipple was supposed to be free!!! I was promised total feminist emancipation and all I got was progress and the gender binary. If TERFs really cared about women’s rights, they’d be out on Oriental Parade in droves testing this country’s public decency laws, not complaining that their precious sex categories are a little more permeable than their favourite alt-right Instagram reels might have them believe. 

  By the time I get home, I’m ready to start a movement.

  I make hot chocolate first.

  There’s a big atrium at the centre of the house and I keep ending up there, as much as I try to fill it with something more interesting, like taxidermy or ferns.

  My satin dream-creature escaped (again) one morning when I forgot to eat breakfast. Slithered away in the dew. I can’t be held responsible for what happens. Most likely nothing will happen. It’ll evaporate at noon and come slinking back to me, heavy and ripe with bright new promises and plump earthy regrets.

  At therapy I talk about how I’m trying to build a Sunday routine.

  My half-bathed street cat hasn’t been here all week. The scratches on my arms are almost gone and the hum of rush hour is closing in. 

  I feel like I’m losing my mind. I leave saucers of music by the back door and wait for it to come back. 

  I buy new matcha and oatmeal shampoo. A new towel. Look in the dark mirrors of car windows as I walk past to see if they have a novel opinion on who I am. 

  I’ve lost track of how many times I swore I wouldn’t believe what my wayward dream-tendril tells me it saw:

  • Muddy footprints across the UN assembly hall. 

  • Scratches against the bell jars in the atrium.

  • Teeth marks in the DSM-5 where my mugshot used to be. 

  —

  Kaia Costanza is a Pōneke-based creature who sometimes appears to the world as a writer/actor/creative-type person. They enjoy speculative fiction, immersive theatre, environmental humanities, and writing that focuses on queer and neurodivergent experiences. Their most recent project was writing and directing Gauntlet Prom: The Musical. They can otherwise be found trying every hobby, going to the library to restore their faith in humanity, or being existential near water. 

  Instagram: hellgoatconstanz

• Saved by the Body and Blood ~ Sage Garrett

  In praise of mosh pits

  god’s eye is a bruised plum 

  sloshing in its socket — 

  beaming down / on herded mortals / on 

  a stampede of calloused skin / on

  bodies / on bodies / on bodies 

  slam flesh / bruise breath / break form 

  unbound steam wrings out from lungs 

  raw heat swells, rises —

  eyes / knuckles / elbows / knees / 

  collide / buckle / bloom / 

  sear your skull right open 

  to free what waits within —

  spirits climb this wreck of meat 

  ceiling lifted / soul-lofted 

  breath and bone in rupture 

  sweat and smoke in rapture

  what’s holy? 

  whatever splits you open — 

  so tear like communion bread 

  on an altar of muscle and spit

  let the strike of fist to ribs 

  rip through us / strip past skin 

  let us hear what breath is left 

  after the body disappears

  —

  Sage Garrett (he/him) is a writer and artist studying religion and political science in Pōneke. Among friends, he is known as an assemblage of tin cans disguised as a person. Outside of writing, Sage can usually be found cataloguing Frankenstein adaptations or interrogating friends about their complicated memories of Sunday school. sage__garrett (instagram)

• Broken In ~ Phoebe Robertson

  It started with the bedspread. Red, threadbare—the kind of fabric that clings in summer, that snags if you move too quickly. You said it looked cheap, felt worse. But I watched your hand linger on it when you thought I wasn’t looking, stroking the roughness like it calmed something restless inside you.

  The first cigarette burn came on a Sunday. You were propped against the headboard in those boxers you always wore, waistband loose, curls spilling low. I remember staring, caught by how easily you carried heat, how even your stillness radiated it. The ember slipped, dropped onto the bed, hissed a warning before it scarred the fabric.

  ‘Shit,’ you muttered, brushing at the mark. But you didn’t look worried. You studied the damage the way you sometimes studied me—with a kind of amused detachment, as though you didn’t mind what you’d done, as though you’d half meant it.

  ‘It’s ruined now,’ I said.

  ‘Nah.’ You smiled. ‘It’s just getting broken in.’

  You always killed the light before you kissed me. ‘It’s better this way,’ you said. I didn’t ask why. I caught glimpses anyway: the slope of your collarbone in moonlight, teeth flashing at my throat, sweat bright on your temple.

  In the dark, you became texture: stubble rasping my skin, the weight of your knee pressing into the mattress, your breath hot and damp at my ear. You pushed my thighs open like it was instinct, like you’d done it a hundred times before. You moved inside me with a rough steadiness, hips snapping, breath hitching, the rhythm more animal than tender. When I tried to catch your face, your hand pressed mine back down to the sheets.

  Your voice broke when you said my name, guttural, half-growl, the word no longer language but a sound pulled from your body. The bed squealed beneath us. Sweat soaked into the mattress, slicking my back, until the whole room smelled of salt and sex.

  After, your arm would drape across my waist, ribs aching under its heaviness. The ceiling sagged above us, pale and cracked, a jagged vein splitting toward the dead bulb.

  ‘Do you think it’s growing?’ I asked once, tracing the fissure with my eyes.

  You didn’t answer immediately. Your fingers twitched at my hip, calluses dragging across skin as if to keep yourself tethered. Finally, you murmured, ‘Yeah. It wasn’t that long before.’ You sounded rough, sanded down.

  The weeks slid into each other. Cigarette ash on the dresser, damp towels heaped at the foot of the bed, your socks shoved under the mattress like offerings. We ate standing up sometimes, takeout cartons dripping grease onto the counter. You never stayed long enough for breakfast, but your scent lingered, sharp, sour, metallic, even after the door clicked behind you.

  Nights blurred most. You came back late, body keyed up, hands impatient. Sometimes you fucked me without words, barely stripping the covers down, your weight pressing me flat. Other times you slowed, dragging it out—biting, licking, tugging me apart in increments until I felt strung open, raw. You left bruises like fingerprints, small half-moons where your teeth grazed. When I touched them later, they pulsed.

  The night you came home with dried blood under your nails, I didn’t ask. Rust clung to the grooves, turning your touch into splinters. When your hand grazed my arm, it left a faint burn.

  Later, I took your hand and licked the blood away. I started at the base of your palm, tongue tracing each ridge, slow. The taste hit metallic, bitter. I worked the nail beds one by one, sucking the iron loose, warm against my tongue. The blood softened under heat, smearing slick. I swallowed fast, too fast, gagging slightly, then went back for more.

  Your fingers flexed against my mouth, almost pulling away, almost shoving deeper. I closed my lips tighter, teeth grazing the nail edge, until you hissed. My tongue darted into the half-moons where the blood had clotted, scraping it clean. The tang bloomed thick, unbearable, but I didn’t stop. I wanted every trace.

  You watched, silent. When I finally let go, my lips were stained dark, my chin streaked. I wiped it with the back of my hand, but the taste clung, briny, alive.

  The sheets were eggshell blue, soft but thinning. I loved the way your freckled skin glowed against them. When you leaned over me, muscles taut, sweat pooling at your collarbone, I twisted toward the mirror on the bedside table, hungry to catch your face.

  ‘Hold still,’ you’d say, hands clamping me in place. You could pin me easily, but I never found a way to hold you.

  Afterward, when you thought I slept, your touch changed. Fingers drifted lightly across my stomach. Your breath slowed. You pressed your chest against my back, lips brushing my shoulder so faintly it felt like apology.

  But you never said the words. Instead, you left traces: a tangled silver chain on the dresser, a smear of ash on the headboard, cologne sharp on the pillow.

  The last time I saw you, you stood in the doorway, keys spinning in your palm. Each metallic click cracked the silence. Your shoulders bunched, weight shifting, eyes refusing mine.

  ‘See you later,’ I said.

  You grunted, jaw tight. The keys slowed in your hand, edges digging into your skin. For a moment, it looked like you might speak. But the air held heavy, unmoved. You turned instead, broad back familiar, and stepped into the hall.

  I waited two months before I knew you weren’t coming back. The sheets stayed crumpled, the grooves of your body pressed deep. At night, sliding in, I felt the stiff salt of your sweat rise sharp when I moved too much.

  The air still held your scent: sour, metallic, faint. I turned on my side and breathed it in, feral as an animal desperate for the last trace of its mate.

  When I finally tore the sheets free, they dragged and snagged, brittle in places, clammy in others. I gathered them to my chest, their weight pressing cold, as though they’d become another body.

  The washing machine rattled when I shoved them in. Lavender detergent hit hard, cloying against the memory of us.

  The machine lurched to life, water slapping the drum. A duvet button struck glass, a sharp click-click-click, faster and faster until it blurred into the churn. The sheets vanished beneath the water, swallowed whole. Froth bubbled up, leaving only a tangle of pale, sodden threads—stripped of weight, of form, of you.

  —

  Phoebe Robertson is a Pākehā author who has recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. She was commended in the Charles Brasch Young Writers Essay Competition and holds further awards from Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, Young NZ Writers, and National Flash Fiction Day. Her work has appeared in the last four editions of Mayhem Literary Journal and various other online platforms.

• fawning ~ Hebe Kearney

  the night we say the L word

  i jam your fingers in the kitchen drawer –

  eggshell blue; linoleum bruise; family house. 

  when your tears dry, mine start.

  your hands unmarked, my heart’s

  scar tissue constricting around

  another accidental crime.

  you hold me like a frightened fawn,

  as if my trembling isn’t perennial,

  & tell me you’ve loved me, while

  weeping on my shoulder about another. to you

  lament is lovely; guilt gorgeous. 

  salt tracks on your cheeks

  let me know there is a path to follow,

  after everything i do in light blue.

  part of penance is confession, belief

  might be downstream &

  your ice-flow eyes are searching me.

  i cannot injure you again.

  i say it back, voice nor’wester dry,

  wishing we were deer after all, 

  & could disappear into 

  some verdant tangle, leaving no tracks

  in its undergrowth, just getting

  further & further away.

  –

  Hebe Kearney (they/them) is a Pākehā poet from Ōtautahi who now calls Tāmaki Makaurau home. Their poetry has appeared in places like: Mantissa Poetry Review, Mayhem, Mote, OF ZOOS, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbooks, Starling, Sweet Mammalian, Symposia, takahē, Tarot, The Spinoff, and Turbine. For a full list of their publications, see www.hebekearney.wordpress.com/publications.

  They are also a proponent of found art, including blackout poetry, collage, and photography of small ironies. They are the founder of Blackout Poetry Aotearoa, through which they run workshops, exhibitions, and competitions on these subjects. You can follow their antics on Instagram @he__be and @blackoutpoetryaotearoa. They want you to know: Free Palestine! Toitū te tiriti! Solidarity forever!

• mother mansrot ~ Ruby-Rose Whitcher

  [To view this story in its correct formatting, please consider viewing the issue 5 PDF]

  -

  Pleasure is a derivative of joy. 

                      [You] are a girl with a [ribbon] knotted around the [nape] of your neck, a wind-up [sex]-doll, a [Brothers] Grimm girl, goose-girl, princess-in-disguise, [old rinkrank], mouse-girl, can you bite [girl]?                           Dusk slips into dawn slips into day slips into crepuscular creature howling at the moon, matted fur knees tunnelling into dirt, earth-ground blooming open and whole and wide and hollow and

          Her hair is Shirley Barber blonde, falling in loose curls to her waist. “My husband doesn’t like it very much.” She is speaking about the garden. There are Nikau palms and Liverworts. Kōwhai as yellow as her hair. Mānuka, Puawananga and imported David Austin Roses and Orchids and Carnations, and Kākābeak. She stirs a teaspoon with Queen Elizabeth’s face embossed on it in her teacup, a fine Crown Lynn blush pink that has passed through many hands from many generations. She shifts uncomfortably on the sofa outside, this ugly orange thing his mother had insisted on gifting them on the eve on which they’d moved into this property, a house that has passed through many hands from many generations of his. His, his, his. She felt very much it all belonged to him except for the garden he loathed. “But he never says so in as many words,” she defended. She laughs to fill the silence. Her laugh is a golden trill, like the delicate and beautiful sound of a cacophony of church bells. She touches one of her curls, “he really does love my hair,” as if this statement is a band aid to fix the oozing wounds of everything else.

          [I] would climb a tower for you! [I] would loop a golden necklace around your neck for you! [I] would never ask to see what is underneath the ribbon! [I] would resist plucking a golden lock of your hair! [I] would marry you even if you were my own daughter! [I] would [I] would [I] would [I] would [I] would

             Every man promises something. It was a wet and clammy spring evening with a sunset of blazing pinks and purples on the night they met. He had stood with an old-time cigar and a silver cigarette case and a fading mustard leather briefcase underneath a clock tower. She had returned as a half-formed beast, golden curls tangled in the soil of solid ground, soles of feet dirtied, and the hem of her gown bloodied. The glass mountain had swallowed her whole: she had fallen deep into the earth, past the dust, past the dirt, past the soils, past the parent materials, slipping beneath the bedrock and into the cave. It had been hours and days and weeks and months and maybe even years since then. Time lost meaning. The underside of her fingernails carried the fabric of the cave (bedsheets, vials, porcelain mugs, beard trimmers, postcards, hairwork mourning buckles, pearl-eye chokers, bowls, bags of seedlings, and dirt, so much dirt) from clawing her way out. She could only sense the flesh-rot of her own skin, the sprouting fungi and black salt, and the tobacco that wafted from his suit into the brisk spring air. She did not ask why he was interested in a girl-thing returning half-torn. Perhaps she should have.

                            [You] are only real to the extent you are performing [sic Butler]. You [are] only [real] to the [extent] you are [performing]. [You] are salient when [performing]. Your [mortality] is only real if performing. Do you know how to dance? How to sing? How to act? How to clean? How to garden? You were [written] into this world through a [socially constructed order]. It is [boring] but you are not bored by it. You [love!] brushing your hair, winged eyeliner, knee-high socks, frilled collars, lipstick, scrubbing dishes, tending to the flowers, rubbing savlon into wounds, dusting, power suits, woven baskets, charm bracelets, gossip, deer, pastel pinks, silk scarfs

             He watches her from the three-panelled fixed window in their bedroom. She is on her hands and knees in the garden, blonde hair tousled down her back and hitting the dirt. He likes the dress she’s wearing: a cream silk 1920s drop waist. It had been passed through hands and hands of many generations of his. The skin above his top lip is perspiring. He is hungry but would practise patience, a virtue. Last night they had eaten the carcass of their pet chicken, Romeo, and his wife had sobbed through every bite. “It’s the circle of life,” he had tried to jest, but the waterworks had been set off again. He didn’t know that she’d be so much work. Sometimes he gets the sense that she is not real. She is a live performance. A carefully constructed woman. The girl of his dreams fashioned from his secret desires. Her head snaps up from the carrot bed to meet his eyes through the glass. Her smile is wan when she finally fixes it on her face, lifting her gloved hand in a polite, tepid greeting of three fingers curling down and then up. Sometimes he gets the sense that she is a ghost. That she is the shadow of someone else. He wants to remember what it is like to love her. 

                                    [She] can smell the stench of decay, that awful blood-rot that wafts from upstairs to downstairs. [He] tells her it’s mortality that she’s smelling. People. People doing things. People living lives. People, people, people. [She] remembers when she was once a person. A person doing things. A person living life. [He] tells her that she was always something more: that magic ran through her blood, hot and heavy. [He] tells her she’s not quite a person, but a girl to be made. [She] grimaces and pukes and cleans. [She] thinks about what is waiting for her upstairs: her father, her lover. [He] sneers that it’s only the crown that they all want from her. [He] tells her so many lies she begins to believe inverted truths.

  (           He had held her wrist delicately between his fingertips and promised her every star aglow in the night sky. “My father built this for me.” The slope of the glass mountain glints in the twinkling night. “For you.” She giggles, turning to the right to face her suitor. He is the boy of her dreams. He is everything so she has promised to help him win. The prize is her. Her heel slips. The glass shatters: it opens up for her, a mouth to swallow her whole. His fingertips retract from her wrist and she falls, falls, falls. Every man wants something. The man holding her wrist had wanted marriage and wealth and royal blood. The man inside the cave wants something more wicked. The natural world had slipped into the ether of a billion dark knights. All she knows now is to cook and clean and make the bed and dust and watch the old man climb the ladder back upstairs.           )

                                                 [You] could be anyone’s girl. This is a truth that rots her teeth so bad the enamel is all erosion. [She] could be [anyone’s girl]. Any girl. Girl, any. To be anything. A girl of anything. It’s at once a terrible and terrifying thought. [You] could [be] anyone’s [girl]. She [could] be [anyone’s] girl. Paraded around the kingdom like a doll, with a woman appointed specifically to brush a gold flat-brush through her golden tresses. Hung up for hungry ravishers to watch. Dangled from towers and bridges and moats and windows. Get on your knees, girl! Anyone could. Anyone could dangle her, parade her, touch her. Cow of cash. Cash of cow.

             He wants a child. His hands are clenched around the steering wheel. He makes them walk along the Karangahake Gorge, forcing a kiss in the tunnel. Later they come to a spot with two teeth steeples erected from the mouth of a church. He puts his hands on her belly feeling the absence of his desire. He shuts his eyes and wills his wants into reality. He recalls standing at the train station and willing his desire of her into material reality. The chatter of a Kea swoops past them. “Is love real or just a feeling I’ve been conditioned to crave?” she asks him with a laugh as hollow as the glass mountain. He brushes her golden hair away from her forehead where it has matted with sweat. There are Lilypads and a creek and Nikau palms. There is nothing inside of her. 

  (           When she was six and her mother was on her deathbed, her father had fashioned a noose around her neck of the most luxurious silk in ebony green. Like your garden, your ferns and palms, he’d murmured as he’d knotted the knot. “Every good woman dies,” he’d informed her as he’d spun her childhood body to face the full-length mirror wrought with a gold-iron frame, “every good mother has to leave to make room for the young.” This was sacrifice. This was duty. This was a role she’d one day inhabit. “You understand?” and she had, implicitly. He’d touched her ribbon then, the knot of it, as lovingly and delicately as she’d watched him touch her mother’s back in the middle of a waltz, or her knuckles at the breakfast table over a plate of bread. Her mother had a ribbon too. Swamp green. The colour of the pond she’d laboriously built over the past three decades: since she was a child too. “You can do the honours soon,” he had whispered, his bearded furry lips touched her cheek. “It’s what she would want.” She looked at her ribbon in the mirror. What a funny thing it all was.          )

             It is all dead. The roses and the romance and the royalty and the reality she’d once fashioned. Everything feels raw that morning, as if her pumpkin-insides had been carved clean and her ears freshly de-waxed and her skin slick with the sheen of a shower. She is standing in the middle of the garden with an open, gaping wound at the base of her throat. He has slashed away her Mānuka and Puawananga and imported David Austin Roses and Orchids and Carnations. The scream she wants won’t make it past her teeth. She grinds them together. “He loves my hair,” she says, looping the pearl bracelet back over her wrist, looping the golden ribbon back over her neck. Her stomach spoils when she catches sight of him in the three-panelled fixed window in their bedroom. Between them is this great well of everything and nothing. “She will do the honours soon.”

  Pleasure is a derivative of joy. 

  —

  Ruby-Rose Whitcher is based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She loves fairytales.

Tiny Tigers ~ Chloe Marsters

• cheap n nasty ~ Freya Turnbull

  dominos vegan cheese lowkey looks like discharge, i say, unhelpfully, 

  as my friend and i take our bites.  

  it’s hard to write a poem about that, but I Am An Artist. 

  my girlhood matured in the gloss of fast-food grease, 

  ripened into rot w energy drink. 

  we stored our weed in a sanrio box, bubblegum spray clotting over fetid bud, peach ice vape juice and pete’s emporium thigh highs. 

  i mean who washes their fishnets more than like once a year n e way? 

  made-to-order, preservative-pumped, dirt-cheap and fuckin delicious, 

  fingers green from aliexpress jewellery dipping in2 

  the bottom of the bag, the barrel, the barnacle scum of 16 n savage. 

  now, at the end of my life (i turned twenty a month ago), i mourn the sinister growth of my frontal lobe, a junk girlhood that only shows in cavities, that ratty riotgrrl clipped like a hangnail at the salon. now, i eat fucking vegan protein yoghurt, and do not have a yeast infection. i’m scared of oil. i still smoke. 

  we vomited vodka and candyfloss into each other’s sinks. the blood’s trite 
  but that too is red.

  —

  Freya Turnbull is a poet, student, and aspiring spectre based in Pōneke. Her work has been featured in a number of publications, most recently Starling, The Spinoff, a fine line, and others. She enjoys putting corpse paint on Barbie dolls. @_cultclassic__

• Groundhog Day on the Spit ~ Freya Gardener

  Marg’s having another party out on the spit. Yeah, I know. My crazy mum reckons tomorrow will never come and – ugh, why am I even trying to explain it? Anyway. You can’t use the road to get out there anymore, you have to swim or kayak or some shit, which is why I steal the boat. I’m sorry, okay?I’m super drunk at this moment and also on speed. Why? Cause the world’s on fire, dude, haven’t you heard? Our planet’s superheating, we’re full of nanoplastics, so like, why give a fuck if we’re all here for nothing? That’s what all the Gen Betas think. And anyway, do the police come after me? No. They come to Marg’s house for a different reason. But that’s later on in the night. Or maybe another night? Anyway, can you stop getting me sidetracked? 

  I steal the boat, bla bla bla. I’m with a guy. Remember Fox? Yeah, well, he’s back in town. I think he’s actually the one who gives me the speed, or at least, we do some on the boat. 

  We get into Marg’s place and all the usuals are there. She’s playing this ancient dubstep or whatever cause it’s what used to play in da clubs, she’s got that stolen traffic light strobing, wet patches on the floor are turning from green to yellow to red, vibes are good. And it’s my childhood home, some nice memories here, so I’m feeling optimistic, you know? I see Runa, she offers me a cone, I’m like, duh dude of course, I live for this shit. We smoke. Then I’m like, oh fuck, where’s Fox? But before I go find him, Runa’s looking in my eyes, and she’s aged so much over the years and I’m so fucked up by now that I feel like I’m looking into the soft brown eyes of this wise old dinosaur. And I’m just watching her puckered old lips as she goes: “Marg’s talking to the ocean.” 

  And I’m just like, what the fuck, again? Cause that’s like the sad part about Marg, she knows what’s happening, she just can’t stop it. I know the feeling cause that’s like every day of my life. So now I’m at the party thinking shit I don’t wanna be thinking and I’m like, I have to find Fox to get more speed.

  I find him in the corner chatting up a guy I don’t recognise who’s dressed up like a secret agent or something. Whatever, Fox’s bisexual and has heaps of options, I’ll never let myself be in love anyway, I don’t care. I’m over it. I rip my eyes off his lips and go, “Dude, d’you have any more speed?” And he just looks at me and goes, “Aye? Hey, have you seen Marg?” And at this point I remember, Fox didn’t give me the speed, Marg gave me the speed yesterday, it was my mum all along. So now I have to leave the party and go find her for more drugs. Oh, and to say happy birthday. 

  There’s no one else on the beach. It’s actually a really nice night, I think. Marg’s usually pretty easy to spot cause there’s nothing on the beach anymore, not since the whole spit got evacuated, so pretty quickly I see her wobbling on the spot just staring at the moonlight on the waves. 

  “Hi, Mum,” I say, and she looks at me for a second like she’s never seen me before in her life, like I didn’t come out of the womb of a woman she loved a long time ago, but then it clicks and I see her settle back into her haze. 

  “Hi, Ginny,” she slurs. “Cool party, aye.” 

  “Yup,” I say, and maybe this is a good time to note it’s a costume party, we’ve all been wearing costumes this whole time. Marg is dressed in a witch’s hat, wearing black robes she would have found at an op shop. I’m a hot dog. Runa’s a dinosaur, which actually makes a lot of sense, now I think. And Fox is a Greek god. Of course he is. Can you tell I’m in love with him? Shit shit shit. 

  “Got any speed?” I ask. Marg doesn’t say anything, just sways in the heat, head turning slowly at the sound of a seagull’s cry, though whether she actually heard it or maybe it was just a blurred flash in her vision, I don’t know. I shouldn’t have asked for speed first. What am I thinking? At least she didn’t hear me. 

  “Happy birthday,” I tell her, loudly, closer to her ear. She smiles vacantly. She must be pretty gone by now. 

  “Connor,” she says. My brother’s name. And I’m actually offended, like, isn’t this our moment right now? But then I look where she’s staring and she’s not looking at a seagull, she’s looking at a kayak, one that’s just pulling up on shore. 

  “Connor!” I’m yelling. “What are you doing? You’re in Christchurch?” 

  And Connor’s yelling, “I can’t believe this! I cannot believe this!” He gets out and he’s just staring, devastated, at the graveyard of our old neighbourhood, which I guess looks kinda bad now cause lots of the houses have started sinking into the sand, like crowded, crooked teeth in the spit’s skeletal jaw. Like, that lady who used to babysit us when our mums were partying, well, her house is caved in now, bits of the wood are drifting and retracting in the lapping tide. It does look shit. I guess I haven’t looked at it properly for a while, but now the moment’s passing cause I’m thinking about what’s next, and what’s next is Connor’s probably gunna ruin everything, cause that’s what my brother does. 

  “You said you’d moved!” He’s yelling at Marg, which is pretty fucking rude to be having a go at her for on her birthday. He can see the look on her face as good as I can. Does he really think anything he says is gunna get through to her right now?

  Proving my point, Marg just laughs and slings an arm around his shoulders, either too deaf to hear or too gone to comprehend the words whatsoever. 

  I’m gunna admit that this point is where I actually can’t fucking remember what really happens. I know I’m yelling and maybe crying, and Connor is yelling back at me, saying I’m a fucking feral cunt and I need help, we both need help, and then we like, hear a splash, and somehow Marg’s in the kayak, not just fallen but sitting upright, and she’s paddling and paddling like a mad banshee from Hell, a sea witch bobbing wildly, nearly capsizing twice in the baby tides, righting herself each time, going so fast she’s carving her own little V in the surf. She’s not even headed to the shore, she’s headed the other way, out to sea.

  I’m just laughing and yelling, “Go Mum! Go!” And Connor’s having a full on panic attack for some reason, saying she’s gunna drown.

  “Where are you going?” He’s screaming. “Mum! Where are you going?”

  And Marg just howls, “I’m freeee!” 

  But then something even more stupid happens. Cause here’s the thing, I was kind of listening to this sound in the background for a while, a speed boat or something. Now all of a sudden there’s actual floodlights, okay, maybe not floodlights but like the brightest LEDs ever, there’s white spots in my vision now, making me even more pissed off than I was just before. Now I’m hearing a second voice I really can’t be fucked hearing tonight. 

  “EVACUATE THE SPIT IMMEDIATELY! THIS LAND HAS BEEN DECLARED OFF-LIMITS TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC!” Of course I recognise the middle-aged woman on the megaphone. This night is going to absolute shit. 

  “Mum!” Connor yells.

  “Connor!” the woman yells.

  “Ellie!” Marg yells.

  “Fuck!” I yell. “I just wanted some speed, dude!” 

  “Ginny!” Ellie yells, from the boat. “You watch your bad language!” 

  And I yell at her, “Mum, are you fucking kidding me right now!?” 

  So Ellie, my other mum, the one who got sober and started working for the City Council, is now on her speedboat trying to get closer to Marg, who’s paddling away and pulling the finger at her and almost slipping into the tide again. And I’m like, this night is fucked. I hope you’re happy, Mum, you ruined my other mum’s 60th birthday. 

  So to cut a long story short, Ellie catches Marg, has a massive go at her, has a massive go at me for some reason, Marg says she’s sorry and the party’s over, Ellie says Marg needs to come to dry land immediately. Marg says okay, she’s kinda powerless to do anything at this point. But I look in the group chat and Marg’s posted a message: PARTY CONTINUES TOMORROW NITE. 

  Cause it’s always groundhog day on the spit, you know? 

  Next night I steal that boat again, oops, but the real big oops comes when I puke. It’s just that Fox says he wants to have a chat and I don’t know what he wants to talk about and it’s going round and round in my head and all this nervous energy just rises up in my chest and then… yeah. 

  Fox raises an eyebrow and is like, “Good shot tonight.” 

  “Whatever,” I say, running a hand through my hair, trying to remember when I’ve thrown up down the side of a boat in front of him before and coming up short. “Anyway, what did you want to, um, talk about?” 

  Turns out I’ve been anxious for no good reason, at least that’s what I'm thinking at this moment, cause Fox pulls out a small plastic baggie and is like, “I’m doing acid tonight. Want some?”

  I’m like, “No?” Like, “Who takes acid at parties?”

  And he’s like, “I do it all the time.”

  I’m like, “Just be safe, okay?”

  “You say that every single time.” He seems genuinely sad. 

  So I’m sitting in the boat trying to think when I’ve ever told him to be safe before, when we scrape up onto the shore, which is even more receded than it was yesterday, just utterly littered with debris from houses around us, wood and plastic banging and scraping on the hull of the boat. 

  But I don’t care cause it’s party time, baby. 

  I don’t know whose birthday it is tonight but it’s someone’s, and some stupid fuck has given Marg a bottle of spirits. Marg + spirits = disaster. She freezes like a gremlin in the headlights when she sees me, bottle halfway to her puckered lips. I spend some time chasing her around, up and over furniture, barging through a sea of randos whose names I don’t know and don’t care about knowing, until eventually I wrestle the bottle off her. Marg howls like a demon. I’m thinking, it’s bedtime, bitch. So I manhandle her into bed, totally knowing there’s no way she’ll stay there. I chill for a bit with Runa (We Get High), look for Fox but he’s gone somewhere, and then the lounge gets lit up by flashing blue and red lights. Ugh. Not the first time the coppas have come and it’s probably not the last. The night has gone to shit, again, and I haven’t even had the chance to… I don’t know. 

  So obviously I sneak out the back door and make my way to the beach. It’s a nice night again, I think, a warm breeze rustling in my hair and there’s a cold beer in my hand, and I’m thinking I’m all alone on the beach and kind of alone in this stupid, stupid world, when I spot two figures slumped in the sand. I stop walking but there’s no way they heard me, I’m moving quietly, they’re wasted and talking with blind intenseness. 

  Marg and Fox. I knew I hadn’t seen the last of that old girl tonight. 

  I listen for a bit, but to be honest, they’re making no sense. 

  “I don’t think there’s a combination of words that will do it, is there?” Fox is sighing in his deep, slow voice.

  “Lovely night,” Marg goes.

  “I could relive tonight a thousand times and we’ll just arrive back here, again and again like we always do. You’ll never stop. I can’t save you.”

  Marg goes, “It’s my birthday today!”

  “I think I need to accept fate. All of our fates,” Fox is going, and I’m like, damn, this dude’s full on tripping. “I’m sorry,” he says, sounding sadder than I’ve ever heard him. “I really tried. I thought I could…” His sentence trails off into the ocean air. 

  I’m about to come up behind them both when Fox peels off, walking along the shore in a slow-motion lope, and now I’m distracted cause Marg is singing happy birthday to herself, so I’m thinking, am I getting her birthday wrong or is she? Cause at this point it’s probably 50/50 odds, but if last night was someone else’s birthday then whose was it? Then I’m like, you know what, it probably doesn’t even matter. How could it, you know? 

  “Marg,” I say, tapping her shoulder, and she barely looks my way, cause that’s what spirits do to her. “Marg,” I go again, and she looks up at me with stars in her eyes and slurs, “Hi, Ginny. Cool party, aye?” 

  I think about telling her the cops are here (again), that Ellie probably called them, or maybe Connor, but I already know it won’t make a difference cause it never does. I think about telling her I feel like I’m fucking imploding and so is she and we really, really need to sort our shit out. I think about telling her I just watched her house tilt, some part of the bank giving way beneath it, the sea eating away at our sanctuary built on sand, chunk by chunk. 

  Instead I just sigh and I say, “Happy birthday, Mum.” 

  And we sit for a bit.

  —

  Freya Gardener was born in the North Island in an undisclosed location. She got her BA in English and Theatre Studies from Otago University in 2021, and completed the Whitireia Publishing diploma in 2024. She’s been published in 4th Floor Journal and her sci-fi play, Elara, was nominated for a B4 25 Playmarket award. Groundhog Day On the Spit is based on another play she wrote, Spit House, which she’s thinking of re-writing as a book. Freya loves sci-fi, horror, comedy, anything with lesbians, and absolutely feral characters, which makes her perfect for this issue, she reckons.

• my grandmother’s heart-shaped uterus ~ Emma Ravens

  [To view this essay in its correct formatting, please consider viewing the issue 5 PDF]

  —

  the river swells, swallowing more and more of the shingle slip where, yesterday, we left the
  valley. we eat smokey lentil stew by candlelight

  on the second day I wake from warmth to a sudden groan of ill-will in my belly, peeling the
  sleeping bag from my sticky thighs. I slumber furiously to driving rain on the tin roof, never
  lulling

  my father flings open the door, a dripping figure wiping his glasses on a hanky. he tells us of
  an ocean at the bottom of the hill carrying kahikatea, their ancient roots sucked from some
  upstream bank. a flood of biblical proportions, and one between my legs. nothing to stem the
  flow

  we wait. I bleed my way through wads of toilet paper while the river continues to rise

  it wouldn’t be safe to cross, so we wait

    and wait

  we ration our food, in case the waiting lasts. I lie in hungry misery. my sleeping bag fills up
  with blood. when my cramps and the rain ease we scramble up chossy cliffs of kidney fern,
  returning with grazed elbows and handfuls of kawakawa to dry by the fire

  on the third day we drink fiery kawakawa tea, and smoke it rolled in the pages of ‘the
  temptress touch’, or some other eighties smut we’re convinced no-one will miss

  the morning after that we cross the river in lines, meandering back down the altered riverbed.
  the flow is barely faster than normal but its course is changed, banks churned and swept by
  days of forceful water. moving slowly, we gaze back up the valley from the rainbow bridge

  we wait for nature, and she waits for us

  . . .

  this is about bodies

  about bleeding and suffering
  about how my body knows how to hurt

  about how many times I rewatched the scene in fleabag where the best woman in business
  tirades about how women are born with pain built in; how men ‘create wars so they can feel
  things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby’

  how these cycles of pain repeat and repeat
  until they’re passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter
  [before I knew the male gaze I knew my mother]

  it’s about the anger of the eldest daughter

  . . .

  phoebe waller-bridge lives and writes feminine rage

  her imperfect heroines resonate with many women and queers, while managing to avoid
  essentialist categorisation of a singular ‘female experience’

  fleabag performs ‘the truth of critique and oppositionality’. her laughing eyes narrate the
  ironies and gendered implications of her interactions, while gradually developing recognition
  of the extent to which she is driven by the male surveyor of woman in herself. through this
  we read a complex phenomenological tapestry of her contradicting anger and conditioning 

  the term ‘queer theory’ was coined in the nineties as a way of thinking about non-conforming
  identities beyond the categories of either deviance or preference, ‘as forms of resistance to
  cultural homogenisation, counteracting dominant discourses with other constructions of the
  subject in culture’. Annamarie Jagose

  the sex fleabag has with men is queered by her performance of a cynically transgressive self

  . . .

  you build a bath in the centre of our courtyard garden, heated by a fire from beneath

  you tell me about the one at your family bach in the sounds, and the weekend after that we
  find an enamelled steel tub for ten bucks at the happy valley tip shop

  this is our second winter simmering under stars made faint by the city glare
  tangled wet bodies fighting for submersion

  in the summers I skinny dip brashly in larger bodies of water

  . . .

  I immerse myself in the theoretical tensions pulling on me when I post gloriously willowy
  semi-nudes. in baring my body I reclaim myself as a sexual being, in a container where I
  have some control over the content by which I’m perceived

  it is brave to enjoy my body in spite of having had it taken from me

  in spite of being told to scorn and hide — and yet love it

  this has nothing to do with how much sex I’m having, yet it’s sexual [whether I’m a slut or
  not feels less pressing lately]

  even though I’m fighting to enjoy my body, it is closer to ideal than I recognise and these
  photos stretch me elegantly [although my body is my rebellion, its representations are tainted
  by my own internalised misogyny]

  maggie tells me that ‘visibility makes possible, but it also disciplines’ Maggie Nelson

  so I begin to feminise my gaze [breaking the rules that bound me comes slowly]

  it is my body that I live in. as well as in its beauty, my body is comprehensively sacred in its
  strength and memory and capacity for creation, its capacity to take me to [and be in] wild
  places

  non-conformism contains a multitude of possibilities
  as there can be no singular way to be queer

  I pray they see the art in it, disclaimed as my vessel of self

  in notes on womanhood, sarah jane writes ‘I couldn’t have written this book before now
  because as a younger woman I was in thrall to society’s ideal womanhood’ Sarah Jane Barnett

  this is a relief 

  . . .

  you are from a family of boys and splutter when I get to the part of the poem about her first
  period. I’m so used to my body destroying itself that your horror is quite sweet

  I forget how foreign this mythical blood must be

  those boys were more scared than she was Nina Minyga Powles

  . . .

  the right to abortion and contraception is a feminist way out of the biologically inherent
  oppression of women through their ability to reproduce, and their correlated denomination as
  society’s baby-makers. this oppression has projected anti-feminist connotations onto
  maternity, which play into the impression of maternity as anti-queer

  ‘I had nearly four decades to become myself before experimenting with my obliteration’ Maggie Nelson

  the queering of maternity allows an individual a full and varied existence before making the
  autonomous decision to pursue parenthood, often through alternative means

  maggie’s argument is for the inherent queerness of pregnancy, as a transitional state which
  occasions radical intimacy with, and radical alienation from one’s body. the forced emotional
  proximity with one’s own constantly fluctuating embodiment blurs the bounds of normalcy;
  ‘how can an experience so profoundly strange and wild and transformative also symbolise or
  enact the ultimate conformity?’

  tramping, too, is a transitional state. we put ourselves through hours of discomfort in the
  transition from a road end to a bed for the night

  why is it that we continue to yearn for the hills?
  why would a parent teach their offspring how to suffer?

  subjecting oneself to the changeable temper of the organic eventually forces one to accept
  comforts and misfortunes as they come

  my bones ache dully and my shins are mottled with bruising. I perch grimly on a wooden
  bunk unhooking biddy-bids from the hair on my legs

  my body throbs and I’m truly in it

  . . .

  my mother is a saint

  my mother is not a saint

  she carries hurt around in her arms

  tenderly bundled

  tenderly raised

  . . .

  on the bank of the pearse, after the tenth crossing, my mother gently peels away layers of
  tights and socks

  raw welts drip down the insides of my calves where the rim of my gumboots has rubbed the
  skin away

  my blood and seeping pus mingle with river water

  she tells me I must have a high pain tolerance

  ‘before you were born, your grandmother came tramping with us. she walked slowly all day,
  saying nothing, but when she took her boots off her feet bled’

  if she’d complained earlier her feet could have been patched up, but these wounds last

  my mother’s mother bled
  her cycles of pain delivered bleeding daughters and granddaughters
  if I have a daughter she will bleed

  . . .

  when my mother turned forty-one, she cut her hair and ran out of patience for me

  I’ve been a testing child, wailing beautifully since I was small
  even now I find myself crying in the middle of drafty restaurants
  wrapping myself in the hand-knitted blanket of my reliably strong emotions

  I cry all the way to the top of the mountain, and all the way into its heart

  these days I understand that she was grieving time’s transformation of her younger self

  with god’s gaze buried in her [when she was a little girl, only men could speak in church]

  and a husband who feared her rage

  she was losing her ideal womanhood, while I grew into mine            

  . . .

  when I meet your mother, you tell me later, she whispers in your ear that I’m very beautiful

  in my bare feet I toss fruit from her apricot tree into a wicker basket. she calls me a ‘tough
  wee thing’ and an apricot falls past the basket. your brother grins at my quiet joy and lifts the
  basket higher.

  . . .

  I learn about the tangles of queer theory with feminist theory and how the space between —
  our tensions and contradictions — are to be revelled in–

  I become familiar with how these moments of mutually understood non-conformity can
  occasion a queer temporality, ‘a mode of inhabiting time that is attentive to the recursive
  eddies and back-to-the-future loops that often pass undetected or uncherished beneath the
  official narrations of the linear sequence that is taken to structure normative life’ Elizabeth Freeman

  where seconds are subjective and a minute leaps or drags depending how much attention you
  pay it, and old centuries exist beside and within this one 

  . . .

  it is in this way, of unifying contradiction, that ‘you can have your empty church with a dirt
  floor swept clean of dirt and your spectacular stained glass gleaming by the cathedral rafters,
  both. because nothing you say can fuck up the space for god’ Maggie Nelson

  curled upon a pew
  to the marriage sacrament
  reading the argonauts 

  when the groom’s father approaches I cover the word ‘fisting’ with a casual fingertip

  . . .

  we fuck in the bath sometimes

  and sing and argue and listen silently

  I feel like a lover

  tonight time escapes me and you’re in and out before I notice. I’ve left it too long and the fire
  has quietened. its final swathes of warmth rise in currents around me as the day fades

  settling kākā shriek from across the valley

  with one body the water laps lower, filling only half the tub. raindrops sear the flesh of my
  cheeks and the tops of my knees

  there is a wooden platform in the garden bath, to prevent scalding ourselves on the hot metal
  bottom. I roll to submerge my frozen face, holding my breath without counting

  hard wood rises against my stomach, presses me upwards

  cold air marks the exposed nape of my neck and the moons of my buttocks

  out of the bathwater

  time lurks in the shadowy corner by the compost bin

  this is our made place between heaven and earth

  one of ‘ecstatic communion with the present moment’ Sally Potter

  I remain,    shivering

  . . .

  humans were made to give each other head I say

  but it’s the act of sex that’s the most natural thing in the world you tell me

  plants and queers shake their heads disapprovingly

  I smile because we are both right: the beauty is in our pleasured bodies

  in the fullness of human sensation

  . . .

  I might one day climb mountains with a baby tied to my front

  become a ‘many-gendered mother of the heart’ Maggie Nelson

  hold my transient body’s creation, cleaved but still close

  absorbed in a vast holy wild

  learning to let go

  of roots tightly clutched

  I leave my mother’s pain behind

  trusted to the wise beech trees

  held within mossy banks and

  the veins of stained-glass kidney ferns

  tears rush from me

  becoming one with the awa

  Works Cited

  Barnett, Sarah Jane. Notes on Womanhood. Otago University Press, 2022.

  Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Duke University Press, 2010.

  Jagose, Annamarie. “Feminism’s Queer Theory.” Feminism & Psychology, vol. 19, no. 2, 2009.

  Levy, Emanuel. Orlando: Interview with Writer/Director Sally Potter. 2010, emanuallevy.com/interviews/orlando-interview-with-writerdirector-sally-potter-8/.

  Mingya Powles, Nina. “Small Bodies of Water.” The Willowherb Review, 2022, www.thewillowherbreview.com/bodies-of-water-nina-mingya-powles.

  Nelson, Maggie. The Argonauts. Graywolf Press, 2015.

  Simmons, William J. “Bad Feminism: On Queer-Feminist Relatability and the Production of Truth in Fleabag.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 61, no. 1, 2020.     

  —

  Emma Ravens (Pākehā) is a young writer and cellist from Wellington. They are a recent graduate of Te Herenga Waka, where they studied English, music and German. She has since been relishing her freedom floating in the mountains of Te Waipounamu; getting lost, making beautiful clothes, and forging some kind of path between the rigid world of classical music and being covered in mud. Her writing has been published in Starling magazine and can be found on instagram @princesstussock

• “twinkle twinkle, wifi modem” ~ olive bly

  (there’s a reason that summer flings don’t happen in winter)

           rug up, man:

           fuck me as unceremoniously as is possible

           here, under the mouldy duvet:

           there’s no need for anything thrilling or gratuitous

           ((your) untrimmed toenails)

           ((your) ruddy appendage)

  i would say we’re star-crossed

  but what may look like a

  meteor shower is a

  dutiful green LED:               standbystandbystandbystandbystandbystandbystandby

  —

  olive bly (Tangata Tiriti, Pākehā) is an outer-disciplinary artist / (her) visual art has recently been exhibited by MEANWHILE & Uindō95 / (her) poetry has been published by various local literary journals & magazines, including a fine line, bad apple, & nine lives / (her) first full-length collection of poetry,
  chrysalis (d[-i-]s)section, was published in August 2025 with 5ever books //

• Cutting your hair at home: a guide for beginners ~ Jemma Richardson

  Before you start you will need

  • Sharp scissors

  • A hairbrush

  • A rat-tail comb

  • 4–7 alligator clips

  • A hairdryer

  • Courage

  Step 1: Prep the hair

  Make sure hair is clean and freshly washed before you begin. Some people will tell you to cut your hair while it’s still wet but those people are wrong; water adds weight, makes hair appear longer, so you risk cutting it too short. You don’t want that now, do you?

  Dry your hair using a hairdryer, or if yours is on the fritz and keeps cutting out, use the pink microfibre hair wrap turban thingy your wife got you as a stocking filler last Christmas, that is meant to absorb water in record time. If you can’t find it, shout to her from the bottom of the stairs: Honey, have you seen my hair turban thingy? 

  Honey might be distracted watching The White Lotus. She might shout something down the stairs like I’ve asked you a million times to tidy the bathroom drawers, it’s no wonder you can’t find anything, you never put things back where they belong—

  Do not respond. Do not engage in a fight. You don’t have time—this hair’s not going to cut itself!

  Step 2: Section your hair

  Grab the assortment of alligator clips, minus the one that rolled down the back of the vanity. You can’t reach down there so it’s not a part of your life anymore. Move on. 

  Take the rat-tail end of the comb and carve a line from the top of your crown to the base of your skull. From there, create smaller sections across your scalp, cutting paths in the hair like teenagers running through a corn field, just like you and your wife did once, when you visited her family farm down south after three months of dating, when you sat on the steps of the groaning porch after the family barbecue, gnawing at the bones of a corn on the cob, kissing in the dark, your lips and fingertips glossy with butter.

  Twist the hair in each section and clip them into place.

  Ta-da! You’re ready for the main event. 

  Step 3: Cut

  Grab the section of hair at the front of your head. Unclip it and comb it out. Take the scissors and snip to your desired length. Start small. You can always take more off later. 

  Grab the next section and repeat, using the hair you’ve just cut as a guide. Work your way around your head, repeating this process for all the other sections—unless you were a lazy idiot and decided to take a shortcut and use a dull pair of kitchen scissors instead of professional grade stainless steel ones like you were meant to, in which case, you’ll need to stop after the first couple of sections to go buy a newer, sharper pair from Chemist Warehouse like you should’ve done in the first place. 

  In the interim, wear a beanie to hide your hacked, half-cut hair. That way, your wife won’t ask questions when she comes home mid-afternoon from her early shift at the bakery, smelling of cinnamon, her t-shirt dusted in flour, with a flimsy, squashed box tucked under her arm filled with ugly and unpopular pastries that didn’t sell. Her early starts mean she’s always in bed by 9pm like an exhausted parent after they’ve put their child to bed and it’s like she’s already on a mummy schedule so why didn’t the last batch of eggs take? No adjustment would have been necessary, you were both ready, it should have been so easy and—

  Your wife texts to say she’s going out tonight with work friends and to not wait up. 

  Exhale your relief. You now have time to fix this.

  Step 3: Cut—cont’d.

  All right. So you have the proper scissors now. Well done. Hopefully you’ve also managed to wrestle them out of the annoying hard plastic safety wrapping they come in, without hurting yourself. 

  Rip off your beanie and review your hair. Remind yourself where you left things off, even if today’s overcast light isn’t as good as yesterday’s sunshine that bounced buoyantly throughout the bathroom. Find the section where you’re pretty sure you stopped cutting, and continue from there.

  Also, do NOT cut hair in a straight, blunt line. For more shape and bounce, chop vertically, with the blades of the scissors parallel to the hair. This is called point cutting, according to the girl you watched on TikTok last night, and she has lovely hair, so she clearly knows what she’s talking about. After a while, you will need to scoop up all the dead hair in both hands and carry it out the door to the rubbish. Cradle it carefully, like a baby, so you don’t spill it everywhere.

  If your hand wavers during any point of the haircut and you think FUCK what am I doing!? Don’t stop. Persevere. You’re too far gone. Give yourself a pep talk in the toothpaste-flecked mirror. Put your arms out and brace the sink, or lie down in the empty bathtub, staring up at the graveyard of succulents bordering the shelf above. Think to yourself: a haircut is about change, and change is ideal after losing your job at the university, ideal after your stupid body decided to stop producing eggs, and after your wife suggested that you can just get a Dalmatian instead. It’s been a rough year, so why not grab the scissors and take back some control over your life? 

  To make the experience (and yourself) feel more profesh, make conversation as you cut, just like a hairdresser would, like you’re at the salon. Sure, this tutorial says it’s specifically for cutting hair “at home” but what is “home” anymore? People say “home is where the heart is” but what if your heart spends more and more time away from you and doesn’t even want to talk to you anymore and— 

  Oh no.

  Would you look at that? 

  Your tears have dampened the hair falling into your face. 

  Snatch a towel.

  Mop up the mess you’ve made.

  It’s a rookie error but that’s okay because you’re just a beginner, in every sense of the word; new to hairdressing, new to infertility, new to all of this. Any mistakes are not your fault! It’s your trembling hands, which are wet from wiping away tears. It could have happened to anyone.

  Rub the hair dry before you continue. Rub until your scalp burns red, until your hair frizzes, looks like it’s been mauled by a pack of rabid hyenas. Take a deep breath. Smack your cheeks with your soggy fingertips. Splash cold water on your face. Ignore the knock on the bathroom door, the jerking of the handle—your wife home earlier than you expected asking why is the door locked? Sarah? Are you in there? 

  Keep going.

  Step 4: Check and blend

  Aw jeez. It looks a lot worse in the morning, doesn’t it? Good thing your wife headed into work before the sun came up, before she could see it. Good thing your wife was too exhausted last night to comment on the beanie you wore all evening, to notice your newly exposed collarbone, the long, ivory stretch of throat when you turned over on your pillow. Then again, why would she notice? She doesn’t bury her nose into the nape of your neck when you spoon anymore. She turns away on her own pillow and forgets to say goodnight, remember?

  Brush out your hair. Slice off any weird, jagged bits you’ve missed. When you’re done, freak out for several minutes. Look up pictures of celebrities on your phone with similar haircuts. Google “pixie cut good”, “short bob chic”, “cropped hair square face”. Convince yourself it’s FINE. You’re totally pulling it off, just like that Getty image of Keira Knightley circa 2004. And unlike your useless batch of eggs, hair regenerates! It’ll grow back! You’ll have more, eventually. Be patient. Be brave. …Maybe even trim a little bit more off? 

  NO, not like that! 

  That’s way too much, you stupid bitch. 

  Why are you such a stupid fucking bitch?

  Step 5: Final adjustments

  Decide that actually, you love your new hair. 

  You feel sexy, wild. 

  Tear off your clothes. 

  Snap a selfie to send to your wife at work, for her to paw at in between rolling delicate pastries, just like she did in the old days. 

  Snag your gaze on the blue-grey pouches under your eyes; the nobs of your spine; the ribs jutting out like the bars of a xylophone; bruises swallowing the sites of old hormone injections, brown needle pricks stale as mosquito bites. All of it monstrous. All of it pointless, pointless, pointless. 

  Chicken out at the last minute. 

  Do NOT hit send. 

  Hunt out an ancient box of hair dye that your ex-flatmate left in the bathroom drawer. Talk yourself into a change of colour to go with the cut. The box says it expired four years ago but really, can hair dye expire? Your hair might end up a slightly different shade of blonde than what’s shown in the packaging but you’re not fussed. 

  The Change is what matters to you, whatever shade it comes in. 

  Step 6: Style out your new look!

  Open a window. Thrash your hands about to waft the peroxide vapours from the bathroom. 

  Dry your hair. Dry your eyes. Dust some Nars Orgasm Blush on the apples of your sallow cheeks. 

  Make a cup of tea. Burrow into the couch. Feel your body and your blood prick up when you hear the scratch of your wife’s key in the door, when you see her shadow blotting out the frosted window panel, when you hear her keys singing in the bowl.

  Wait for her to notice.

  You wait for her to notice.

  Wait for her to notice.

  —

  Jemma Richardson is a writer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the IIML. Her stories have been published in Turbine and Salient.

• profile ~ Zia Ravenscroft

  [To view this poem in its correct formatting, please consider viewing the issue 5 PDF]

  -

  you up?

  will i always feel like this? like i have to carry big bags of fresh food up the hill
  only to sweat and gasp and arrive with all the oranges spoiled, buzzing with flies
  the greens gone slimy. from the air i’ve been breathing, you’d think i was incomplete.
  my therapist asks if i’ve taken up smoking and telling the truth feels like a lie
  i’ve been lying on couches and thinking about choking.
  i’ve been drawing long baths and waiting until the water’s cold
  to sink down with my nose under
  i want to feel as desired as that coat on sale. the one you try on
  again and again before buying just to remind yourself how good it looks
  i wish you could see me in your mirror
  and feel you’ve made the right decision
  i try on twenty shirts a day and none of them fit right.

  too much existence: my dreams when they all
  blend like oil and i’m at once eating and
  not eating and licking something thick from your fingers
  or how before bed you and your precious name tell me
  you want me in your arms. you know little about me
  only that ribs by lorde was the song i heard most last year
  only that i made lots of permanent and ugly mistakes when i was fifteen
  look at my legs. i go on long walks every morning and barely see the world.
  i only see the world when it’s dark out and i’m driving alone
  with the dog i don’t have howling in the back seat.

  –

  Zia Ravenscroft (he/they/it) is a writer, actor, drag king, and Aotearoa’s next top bottom currently studying in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.  He has previously been published in Starling, Cordite, and bad apple among others. 

• Wolf Cries Boy ~ Theo Coles

  I had been a wolf far longer than I had been a boy, but unlike the monster within me, boyhood came much more natural. It was a book I think I’ve read before, something tucked away deep within me. When I found it, finally, it was underlined and as yellowed as burnt baking paper. And I knew it all word for word.

  The monster is much more unpredictable. When I was young, my Pop said no one had nothing to suspect, and he was right back then. Who would think anything dangerous of a little girl in her denim overalls and ropey two braids? The first moon I’d not yet learnt to control it, and I howled the whole night. Dusty ruby sunset right through to first light, Pop said he didn’t catch a wink. That morning my voice sounded like I’d been sick for weeks. All hoarse and cracked. Something in me knew then. Something in me always did.

  Now, I take the dried cranberries in a fist and sprinkle them on my cereal. I bite my lip with my bottom tooth in place of letting free a tear. My tooth is jagged and it makes my lip bleed, but I am afraid that if I start to cry now, I will not stop.

  I spoon the cereal in heaps and the milk dribbles down my chin. When I was a little girl Pop used to wipe it with his handkerchief, messy pup, he’d say, always through a smile. Sometimes I have dreams where he didn’t die before I realised. He and I before the old cracked bathroom mirror, I broke it once with my claws. He is shedding the pepper from his cheeks with his old razor, and I have my hand placed gently over his. We guide the blade down his cheek, over his Adam’s apple. Your turn, pup, he tells me, gentle. He hands me the razor and where there is nothing when I wake, in the dream there is fuzz like that on a peach. I scrape at it and his reflection nods at mine.

  Another, we swim in the ocean. Pop used to drive me out there in his old pickup when I was a little girl, before the wolf got too unpredictable. In my shorts and singlet I would wade out into the bluey black, until just my nose and eyes bobbed above. I would exhale into the saltwater, turning my breath all to bubbles. Pop said it was good for the wounds I gave myself, said the ocean heals like nothing else. My dream of the ocean is almost exactly like the memory. But I am older, and the wolf doesn’t hold us back. I swim with only shorts. Two protruding scars across my bare chest, that meet and leave a too small gap for my heart. They heal funny, white and raised like barbed wire. I take no notice of them. I submerge myself right up to my nose. The saltwater is good on my wounds, and I am glad to have them.

  When Pop got sick, all he could think about was the wolf. We could predict it less, the older I got. As the tally on the doorway where he measured and marked my height stretched out, and the years got busier and passed quicker, the wolf changed too. At our house in the countryside, far apart enough from neighbours and traffic, I’d stay in the farm shed until the wolf was gone. Only the occasional sheep or possum was a ramification out there. 

  But then it got worse and we moved further away. Settling in a tiny cabin in the forest. Pop fell in love with the kererū and how they swooped through the trees. He built a bunker for the wolf. Everything, for a while, was beautiful. The wolf contained, and the only evidence when the wolf was gone was the brass hinge and handle on the bunker door, gleaming out beneath the ferns and brush.

  Then Pop got sick, and the routines we’d settled into had to change. He had to move close to the hospital for his treatments. I’d drive long and lonely roads back to the cabin for the wolf, between visits to see him. I was better at tending to what the monster needed, but I had by no means mastered it yet. 

  The forest, with its birds and countless shades of green, had lost all its charm, now it was only me. I was aware, maybe for the first time, of what Pop had tried to keep hidden from me. I was a monster, an ugly thing, and the world wasn’t made for monsters. On the way back to see Pop, especially those last few weeks when he was up in the hospital, I’d stop by the ocean on the way into town. I’d submerge my whole body. Watch the bubbles rise until I got dizzy. But I always knew I had to come back up for air, because Pop couldn’t die alone.

  Now, on the year anniversary of his death, those last months feel akin to a dream. The memories have a sepia-like haze to them. IV lines and polystyrene coffee cups. Pop singing. The day we had to shave his head, and I ran the clippers across his scalp in strips like tiny race car tracks. And then something in me got brave, the way it only can when you’re so terrified, a switch in you flicks. You realise you can do anything. There is a strange and reckless power in fear. 

  So, I took the clippers to the top of my head and felt thick clumps of my hair fall free. Pop’s eyes filled up. I felt free of more than just my hair. My eyes filled up too, but it wasn’t the right time to tell him of my joy. 

  Pop always kept us free of doctors, worried what they’d do if they found out about me. But when he died, there was no one left to protect. Just me, for a while. So I drove to a clinic a few months later and for the first time I felt the coolness of a stethoscope to my chest, then spine. A thermometer in my ear canal. A needle that drew blood. Through the examinations and tests, the wolf kept itself hidden. I took it to the cabin in the forest and blew kisses to the kererū for Pop. I locked myself in the bunker and I woke sometimes, bleeding by my own claws. But I went to the ocean on the way home. It became easier to handle the wolf. I tended to it in all the ways he’d taught me to.

  Learning to stick the needle in my belly was easy. I was brave with pain. The first time the nurse looked at me and said, are you sure you haven’t done this before?

  I thought about the talons of the wolf. How sharp and unforgiving. But at this, I didn’t flinch. My voice got hoarse and then deeper, without the wolf catching even a glimpse of the moon. I remembered the dreams and my life inched closer. The ocean with two scars. Peppered cheeks, like Pop had.

  I wipe my mouth clean and take to the mirror, still cracked diagonal, a memory of something we couldn’t control. My not long ago–bald head is sprouting curls now, mousy brown and untamed. I take Pop’s wooden razor from the countertop, and run it down my cheeks and neck, gentle. I imagine the tiny pip of flesh where my Adam’s apple would be. And still, I look more like myself than ever.

  Today, I will go to work in the thick December heat in the orchard, the air filled with the smell of rotting apples and pollen. I’ll drink cheap instant coffee with morning tea. The other men and I will say little, maybe share a packet of gingernuts between us, but it is enough to be able to be in the company of others. For lunch I’ll eat the leftovers my partner made me, at his place last week.

  And when the sky changes, that dusty ruby pink of summer sunsets, I’ll drive the wolf to the cabin and answer a call on the way there. He’ll ask how I am, and he won’t mention the anniversary, but it will go noticed and unsaid.

  I will tell him I ate cranberries on my cereal, and though he never met my Pop he knows enough stories to know that was his favourite. As the sky turns plum, I will promise to be safe. I will promise that if I wake wounded I will stop by the sea, and call him to meet me.

  I am new to love, and new to boyhood, but it is still somehow a book I have read before. Months later he will offer to replace the broken mirror and I will shake my head. Pop’s there, maybe only in dreams now, but still. We hold the sharp thing in our hands together, and make it soft. 

  —

  Theo Coles is a writer and artist, and professional art gallery dweller, based in Tāmaki Makaurau. His writing spans poetry, art writing, and essay work. He has been published in platforms including Tarot Poetry Journal, bad apple gay, & Overcom Magazine. Theo is studying a BA in Gender Studies and English and is interested in exploring work that exists at the intersection of art and language. 

Escape ~ Laura Hern

• Visual Artist Bios

  Chloe Marsters is an Auckland-based artist of Cook Island descent. Chloe has been drawing since she was tiny. Her Mum is a brilliant creative and her Dad is a Marvel fan so visual art was well respected in their home. Throughout her youth she studied voraciously. Her self-appointed course material was discovered in secondhand bookshops. Heavy Metal Magazine... Underground Comix... Psychedelic Poster Art... Erotic Surrealism... all made a strong impression. Chloe gained critical success early in her art career, and as a teenager she was awarded the Park Lane Wallace Trust Development Award as part of the prestigious Wallace Trust Art Awards in 2009.

  –

  Laura Hern is a student by day and a creative by night. She has been published in Tarot Poetry Journal, The Quick Brown Dog Journal, Minor Gospel, Overcom, and bad apple. She draws inspiration from the natural world, angry women, and the human psyche.