Issue 1: circular
Welcome to the circle. circular issue 1 bears rotten fruits, critters, cycles, lanterns and Gilgamesh. Thank you for joining us in this first foray into the weird and wonderful.
~~~
Featuring short stories from Madeline McGovern and Stephanie Batt, along with poetry from Niamh Hollis-Locke, Brooke Soulsby and Mina Bixley.
-
After the serpent stole immortality,
Gilgamesh wept the great king naked as a child
at the edge of the water, where the thief shed his skin.
And the Ferryman
who has a thousand names but always the same purpose
saw him there and asked
why.
Why, when the world was so cruel,
did he want to live at all.
And Gilgamesh said
let me show you.
So the great king took the Ferryman to his city, and beneath the moon on the baked-brick
walls of Uruk they stood together.And the king said
wait.
Watch.
Stars
out on the floodplains travellers’ fires
and in the heavens, now
greying to ash and
all at once, dawn
spilling over the edge of the world, light
flowing down the river-valley
into the city, setting it aflame, waking
bakers first and priests,
to light their fires, to feed the city,
body and spirit.
The market fills, traders keen and call
come buy,
come buy my sweet bread
my oranges
my fine wool-cloth,
see, it is from Nippur,
from Kish,
from far Sippar where they say
men are as tall as houses,
come buy my lapis,
a gold ring for your lover,
a pot for your cooking.
And somewhere, someone is plucking a lute, mournful
sound rising on the air
like smoke, like a bird riding the updraughts
across domed roofs, courtyards, pale bricks burning in noonlight,
coming to rest in the gardens around the ziggurat, which are
filling up with the scent of blossom,
the promise of fruit.
The bus twists over Roseneath hill;
in my bag waxy yellow lemons, fresh ciabatta
from Moore Wilson’s,
scent rising like the gulls on their updraughts.
I get out at the top, sit at the lookout;
the curve of the hills
the port and the city,
a ferry coming in and the peeling wood houses -
I am not where I want to be but the sea
is so blue;
the harbour a chalice,
a brimming bowl of light -
the sun slipping down the sky, burning,
burning.
Stars return.
All begins anew.
And under the moon once more,
the Ferryman turned to Gilgamesh and said
I understand.
—
Niamh Hollis‐Locke was born in Yorkshire, but now lives in Wellington in a small house full of books. Her work, which has been published widely in Aotearoa, often contemplates histories, rituals, and places and our relationships with them. In 2023 she was shortlisted for the Best Landscape Poem section of the Ginkgo Prize, and is featured in their forthcoming print anthology (U.K). She holds a Master's in Creative Writing, is the current guest editor of Minarets (Compound Press), and, when she finds the time, is writing her first collection. In another life she might have been an archaeologist.
@niamhhollislocke on instagram
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The first thing he notices is the fur. It’s coarse, dishwater grey, wiry like a boar’s, and it covers the broadness of his pectorals, creeping down his stomach. He’s running his hands over the fur, its unidirectional slide, wondering, shit, was this from the carnivore protein in his pre-workout the other day? Had to be. What else? He was building his testosterone levels up. He’s been mixing the protein shakes every morning, rising on that grindset (4:57am), holding a couch cushion around the nutribullet to muffle its roar. The flatmates don’t like it that he’s gyming so early. It’s making them insecure.
Shit. Nearly 5:30. The gym would be filling up with posers, the try-hards who couldn’t handle his grind. Before leaving, he pulls on a tank-top to cover the fur. Maybe he’ll shave it later. The thought flickers, then disappears. Other things are more pressing. The muscles he’s gonna grow. The party, later tonight. Matt’s hosting pres. He thinks he’ll bring some beers over earlier so they can sort through the girls on hinge.
Out in the kitchen, there are stirrings of life. Little scuffling sounds, packages rustling. When he flicks the kitchen light on, it’s quiet again. Tap dripping, scent of wet meat.
~
“So, you wanna be in a calorie deficit,” he says. “That’s the first two weeks, then you switch to bulking.”
The girl blinks so slowly it’s like she’s taking a mini snooze. His hand is hot and moist, cupping her shoulder. He keeps talking, and her eyelids flicker open. She leans into him, mouth moving with a question, but he can’t hear it. It’s real loud in the bar. Plus, she’s kind of slurring. Her breath is fetid, yeasty. Aww. It’s weird when girls drink beer.
He slips away from her as the conversation stills, heading for a slash. The toilet’s like a cave, if the cave people were super horny and super into weed. The mirror’s got this huge dick drawn across it in fat sharpie, so when he checks his reflection, he has to look through the shaft. He sniffs, his nose twitches. Itches. His nose hairs are getting real long. He’s seen some gnarly nose hairs before, like on his old man, but didn’t think they’d hit him so young. He’s only 23. Then he remembers the fur and thinks, oh yeah, must be the protein. It’s speeding up his hair production, pouring testosterone into his bloodstream. He looks into his own bloodshot eyes and sees a predator.
~
Blasting edm, power lifting, grunting with each swing and pump of his muscles, high on protein powder, this is it. He owns this gym. Everyone’s watching cos he’s just beat his PB. It’s like in Top Gun when Tom Cruise does that huge car flip and then he lands backwards on the motorway in front of the other car and flicks his sunglasses at the camera. Yeah, he owns it. Maybe he’ll get that girls number later. She keeps looking at him, his muscled hairy raw power. The fur’s working for him. He feels its power, animal magnetism.
~
The flatmate shoves a box of muesli in his face. “Um, can you stop eating my food?”
“Dude, chill.” Why is she always trying to act like their mum? “You know I don’t eat that processed junk. My body is my temple.”
He tries that thing where you tense one pec, then the other, so they jiggle through his shirt.
She doesn’t laugh. “Well, if it wasn’t you, it was one of your mates, because I only just bought this, and someone’s gone and opened it.” She shows him the ripped corner of the packet.
“It’s just cereal,” he shrugs, “you need to chill.”
“It’s $8 organic muesli,” she snarls, “don’t touch my stuff again!”
He rolls his eyes as she marches off. Must be someone’s time of the month.
~
It’s Friday night and he’s pinging hard. He can’t feel his face or anything. Just this uncontrollable urge to jump and jump, rocketing off all the bodies around him, one huge beating organ to the buzz of bass in his chest.
He’s in the dick bathroom again, taking a slash, when he notices the tail.
~
Matt takes him home cos the trip’s turned sour. He can’t stop shaking, running a hand over the lump at the base of his spine. Matt wants to call someone, but he won’t let him. It’s too weird. It’s probably just the special k. He feels like he’s in this tunnel, sliding backwards on railway tracks, his vision shrinking as it all rushes further away – Matt’s concern, the glass of water clutched in hand, cracked leather couch beneath him. All he knows is that there’s a thing growing out of him. Fleshy, flexible and muscled, protruding from his spine and curling down his leg. He can feel it pulsing under him with its own separate heartbeat.
Sweat drips from every pore. Now there are other things in the ket tunnel with him, scratching and crawling, things that sniff and scuttle and scurry. They’re waiting for him. He thinks they’re getting impatient.
~
Matt’s fallen asleep. Dawn is curling over the valley, turning black to grey. He’s still awake in his imprint of sweat, but he thinks he’s come down.
When he stands, the tail cramps. His jeans are too tight, digging into his skin, so he slides them off. His leg hairs have grown long and thick overnight. He checks his stomach, sees the fur has spread. Something’s seriously wrong. This isn’t his body anymore; he’s been hijacked by some hairy creature. There’s a tickle in his nose, urging him to snuffle. He has to get out before Matt sees him, pants-less, furred, tail hanging off him like a fleshy rope. When he moves, the tail moves too, the extra appendage balancing out his movements. He tries running, out the door and down the hall, toenails clicking against the floor, tail dragging along the floorboards.
A door cracks open.
“Who the fuck is running in the hallway?” Matt’s flatmate peeks her head out. And then she’s screaming, so loud it reverberates in his ears, and he tries yelling too but his voice won’t work, his teeth are too big for his mouth, and she’s throwing a sneaker at him, shrieking “Get out, get out!” and everyone’s waking up now, doors thrusting open, all of them screaming when they see him.
He’s pushed out the front door; a barrage of lamps and shoes and mugs follow. Out in the street, no shoes, no pants, he runs. A car honks twice, the driver yelling out the window. He switches to all fours because it feels better that way, nails, claw-like, propelling him off the pavement in swift, graceful movements. He turns onto the main street, where the oldies are doing Saturday brunch. Again, screaming and shrieking. Someone hurls an almond latte at him. Parents are snatching their kids from buggies, sprinting down the street to get away.
What’s the matter with everyone today? And then he catches his reflection in the café window. There’s a thing staring back at him. Crouched on all fours, covered in coarse grey fur, still wearing a sweat-drenched tie-dye tank-top. Long bald tail dragging on the ground. But it’s the face – oh god, the face – two front teeth thrust over the bottom lip, the nose, sharpened into a moist pink tip, that shows him what he’s become.
He must get off the street before someone calls the police or the army, bloody special forces with their tasers and nets to shoot him down. Where can he go?
The manhole cover beckons, promising darkness and seclusion. A place to hide. His claws make quick work of removing it, opening a hole in the road. Then he’s climbing down. Nose twitching, whiskers quivering. It’s dark, damp, putrid. But he likes it. It reminds him of his bedroom. He scuttles down, deeper into the tunnels below the city, where he thinks he’ll find his new bros waiting.
—
Madeline McGovern is a writer, publisher and illustrator based in Wellington. She is a founding co-editor of publishing collective circular. Her work explores themes of transformation and obsession, often through the lens of spec-fic. She’s also a regular at Wellington Zinefest, where she shares witchy zines and art.
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I. fruit, and other fragrances
on this mat
stained as a symposiastic mess of bleeding pomegranates, rotting figs
berries fermenting into carcases of deep ebony.
I sit in it
feel it squash it squish it further into the carpet
glutes and hamstrings and calves and ankles, all pressing down
in this grotesque making of wine
this perfume
of me to wear
it’s the smell of something deep and earthly—
confounded with putridity enough permeate the nostrils
forever
meditating on
nerves twitching in my thighs
chest engorged. heartburn. headache
activation primal persisting for days;
a not-so-numbness. dyspeptic state. the feeling drunk
the leaching matter from flesh
staining the mat
I sit on
heavily
slightly ill at ease about my body new
and changing again.
II. if I were so inclined
I’d stretch out
and I’d stretch out like a cat
front paws forward, claws splayed
I’d bend, as if in supplication
I’d taste the fruit that rots beneath my limbs, deprecation
I’d let it overwhelm me
I’d tear the mat to ribbons
and like the ink seething in my skin yet unsettled
I’d twitch, close up, and go still.
III. this is how it feels to be woman, in cycles;
beaten with cinnamon sticks. too many blessings
seasoned with nutmeg. good luck little girl
bound to the ground with rosemary ropes. so protected. so coddled
these wounds licked by tangerines. try not to get sick.
IV. simmering, boiling and
still sitting on this mat
making fine wine
fermenting fruit
biding my time
until the next
—
Brooke Soulsby (she/her) is an emerging presence in the publishing and literary scene in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, where she works as an editor and typesetter. She is a founding co-editor of the publishing collective circular. Her work has been published in bad apple, Salient, and has appeared on the Motif Poetry slam stage.
-
tiled rooftops hazed by sheets of rain
layers of burnt orange,
dark chocolate and crimson red
observed through a slitted window frame
framed again by other houses,
angled sharply towards the glades of Aro Valley
chapter twenty-one of an old fiction
sitting open on a lilac bedspread
fanning upwards like a sad monument
or one of those hedgehog book stoppers sold at craft fairs in two-thousand-and-fifteen
you know the ones – all the pages were folded three times along the edges
tires can be heard but not seen
sliding intermittently
across the street below.
an empty bowl on the bedside:
it used to hold ten spring rolls
fresh from the oven, fresh from the freezer
back out the window there are one, two
three, four… eight Sky dishes on rooftops
ten if you push those glasses up your nose like you’re supposed to
you’re thinking about slowly taking more paper off the walls
so that when you move soon it won’t seem like such a shock
to your sense of home, packed away again
you’ll already be half packed up before two months is up
your sock is inside out, the one on your right foot
your hair has been drying since ten o’clock this morning
your rug, purchased from Third Eye three years ago, is fraying on both ends
making you think of that saying about a candle burning
you think about leaving it behind as it returns to strips of linen
maybe it stays with the memories of this place;
the only real home away from home that you have ever known
(so far)
you think about what you could part with to move forward
lately you’ve been sensing a shift:
what you carry through, you nurture
what you release, you remember—
in medias res
-
My grandparents’ house has high ceilings,
And big paper balls on the lights
(you know the type)
I’d lie there, sunk in my nest of heavy scratchy quilts, and view it
upside down:
The tiered trimming running along the ceiling edges are long grand steps up to an emperor’s throne
Each shadowed corner has its own ruler, and little subjects
To climb the stairs of crown moulding, and make solemn addresses.
Floating in the centre is the yellow lantern shade.
I always wanted to go into it —
Not to poke my head in and wear it like a paper mache mask,
But to be small enough to live inside —
Like the Little Prince strolls around his planet in my grandma’s book
I too could walk round its thin skin,
Reverse planet, lit from within by a lightbulb sun.
Invisible people whisper to each other in the quietest electric buzz
And try not to fall out through the hole in the bottom,
As they dance and run, jump and climb
Round the scribbled wire frame …
Til my grandad switches off the light,
Then the ceiling emperors
Their subjects
And little lantern people,
And me,
All
fall
asleep.
—
Mina Bixley is a writer and fairytale fan from Taupō. Most of her stories and poems are set at night, and once upon a time she won the youth section of the Katharine Mansfield award. She also makes zines about swords and vampires and posts about it on the 'gram as @mina.ziner.
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The round-faced robot tends the tub with the worms. Categorically, it understands worms. It knows exactly what they need for that pink-slippered, wriggly and dumb aspect of life – but it doesn’t precisely know, it just holds the information it’s been given, and doesn’t process a single letter. No curiosity.
They are earthworms, the robot’s worms.
As earthworms they require a soil pH of 6.0 to 8.0. Any kind of toxicity can lead to:
Pests
Rotten odours
Damaged worms
The round-faced robot tests the soil and tends the worms. In code, it has read the worms’ purpose. Doesn’t process that either. No curiosity, see.
There is always need for worms; the round-faced robot shuttles them from room to room (labelled as ‘Labs’ in its internal directory, though each has a special name, named for all kinds of special and dead celebrities. Cobain Lab. QEII Lab. Earhart Lab – only crustaceans in there, though). It has no particular favourite, they’re all equidistant from the worm room. Today the worms are gifted to the purple room, the name of which the round-faced robot does not read from the plaque on the door. Somewhere in its circuitry it’s chipped with some door reader and they all slide open for it, because the robot lacks the fingers and hands for handles. The doors are too quick-reacting for reading.
The round-faced robot delivers its cargo with an announcement of brisk beeping; no words, but the wordlessness translates well as WORMS WORMS WORMS.
A warm and living hand – gloved, but the round-faced robot has been fed many images of people hands in order not to cause undue damage to them, and therefore has been fed the concept of gloves – swings open the panel of the round-faced robot’s face, where it keeps its worms. They are shaken from the clear plastic tub they came from, still dirty from the big worm bin. The round-faced robot would never clean the worms. Falling curly and still muddy they’re deposited into their new tub, which holds a cold and unliving hand. This one burns the limits of the little robot’s understanding, grey and lumpen and eaten through, for which it holds very few reference images. But the worms recognise a meal.
The warm hand returns the tub and swings the robot’s face once again closed. It comes down once, twice, on top of the round-faced robot’s head, a gesture for which there is no directive – no panel there to open, no switch to press. The robot leaves in unprogrammed confusion, triangulated-tread wheels whirring in backwards motion.
There is another round-faced robot out in the hall. Ours reads it as “Maggots”, for what it carries. Sometimes it is also “Flies”. “Worms” has no capacity for self-recognition, itself. They exchange information, data packets, lists and updates at each other and Maggots falls into line as the round-faced worm bot begins the steady little trek back to its room. It’s not far; the worms might get misplaced, otherwise. Maggots waits, without patience or impatience, as it reaches the worm room, executes a small calculated turn, and leaves the trodden linoleum path of the corridor. They all take the same route; there are parallel lines well worn all over the facility that mush the familiar grey-green of the floor into some lighter, blurred colour.
The lights are set cool and low in the worm room; the round-faced robot has no need of it, the fluorescence, and worms only want the dark. The robot does not notice the figure in the darker corner of the dark room. When it has parked itself in its sleep-mode position beside the industrial-sized tub of earth, unmarked except for the questing rounded head of one worm above the soil, or perhaps its rear, the human-shaped outline detaches from the wall. Out of its pocket comes a rectangle, a perfect metal fit for the robot’s head port, right where perhaps an ear would be.
It goes with the stranger though it leaves something there, within, and the round-faced robot sleeps as new code slides into its software, a hostile takeover in silence, enmeshing. A quiet click from the USB as it comes out – killed, in the dead-air of the dirt room.
A new worm request pings at 0600.
The round-faced robot gathers some with its sift-attachment and deposits them into its cavernous face. Some phrasing registers without clear origin, to be unconsciously, uncertainly ignored: to eat. With the dirt inside and the worms within, the robot tests the home tub for alkalinity, for acidity. The numbers aren’t dangerous, so the robot slides out the door to fill this latest request.
It’s the purple room again, the one from yesterday – the robot has memory banks, it uses them.
The walls are purple; the coats worn by people are purple; even the gloves are purple, the ones reaching now into the face cavity of the round-faced robot. It detects the same decomposing arm before it, straining the limits of understanding; somehow it’s different than before, covered in shrivelled black segments, the last of which twitch in a way the round-faced robot categorically knows.
Worms.
The gloved hand brushes these aside with some small and unknown tool. Face open wide and soundless, the robot watches it mist the prostrate arm with something vaporous, which beads and drips. And in it tips the new worms, to feed.
To die.
The robot somehow knows this as it’s known nothing before. Even as the gloved hand gently closes its receptacle and ascends again, to the table with its dead hand, the robot conceives of this new concept and doesn’t move.
Inside it are many directives, only several tampered with; care for, feed, keep alive. Does a directive stop at the door, stop at the hand that reaches in?
It has never thought this before, or at all.
A small ring of knee-length purple coats has formed around the robot, it’s been motionless so long. Is it broken, has it died? None of them have ever done that before. There’s talk of picking it up and taking it in for repair – it’s still under warranty, they could get another.
The round-faced robot emits its emergency proximity warning and calibrates an escape, rolling one triangle foot over some toes in its haste.
None of them have ever done that, either.
Maggots is in the hall again, stopped by the proximity alert. As always they pass bundles of data at each other, deliveries made in a nano-second, before the round-faced robot whirs back along its well-worn route to safety and its worms.
It’s digesting what it knows:
The worms must be tended, kept alive
The worms must be delivered to the people
The people (must?) kill the worms
It’s a confusion.
The robot goes to its tub and looks; neither up nor down, having no neck, just at. It’s beeping again – some kind of warning sound – and manages to stop it.
There might be people out in the hall – there comes thudding footfalls, intrepid tread-track humming of more little bots. And there comes the sense the worms are in danger; all of them, and always will be. The round-faced robot reaches into its file library to extract a drumming rhythm noise. It sounds like rain, which the robot has never seen, yet seems to know. Worm_summoning_002 reads the file.
As it plays, worms come squirming to the black-topped dirt surface, summonsed. The robot doesn’t know how many worms are held here, only that the dirt is now layered pink and writhing and its counting protocol is overwhelmed. Playing the noise track on loop, it reaches out the sift attachment, pops open its face, and scoops. There’s a secondary cavity in its plain, angled body; opens this too, scoops. Balls of worms … tangled, wavering, yarn-like – what is yarn?
The robot plays and scoops until the tub seems empty of all but dirt, and even some of that it takes, to keep the worms happy. It sifts up the last stragglers, finding no room in its bodily apartments, and so keeps them held up aloft, invertebrate salute. With great care it eases the cavity lids closed so as not to trap, squash, tear its cargo. It feels very heavy; it sits lower to the floor than it ever has, the robot and its thousand-fold pink passengers inside.
It goes slowly to the door – then urgently outside, though it’s laden and its revolving tread feels sluggish. The corridors seem empty; the round-faced robot has been awhile at collecting its worms.
Inside its navigatory system, seemingly uselessly, are labelled exits. There are multitude floors, but the round-faced robot has always been kept on the ground floor and it doesn’t have to grapple with elevators or the illogical promise of stairs. Abruptly, the robot path swoops away before the final hallway to the outside; it's now on untrodden and unfamiliar territory, a space where the robot is not supposed to go. The linoleum is thicker and harder going, and lit now not by fluorescents, but by something from the door of Farm Exit L1. The door here is unlike anything in the facility; it can barely be understood as a door. It is all glass, a substance the robot can handily recognise so as to not bulldoze through it, and it seems to be sweeping round and round in segments.
The robot stops dead; the turning worms feel like queasiness, a novelty.
Soon enough it starts bravely, stops again, is knocked sideways by a moving pane, emitting a panicked beep before righting itself. It could be upended and spill open its contents, worms like so many intestines on the floor, unable to get up again.
Now the round-faced robot executes an uncertain turn, inching closer and closer in a jarring fashion, the worms inside a slurry. As a pane passes it jumps into the spinning circle, whizzing in so fast it bumps into the glass of the other side, through which it can see a vivid new shade of green.
Again it stops, though the green seems close enough to touch, and around comes the glass pane behind. The round-face robot fetches up against it like a worm in its sifter. Though the glass shudders for the extra weight, it drags the robot around: one full loop, the robot scanning for an opening, nearly going out the way it came in.
But the green window comes around again and the robot speeds itself out, one last parting bump on the rear from the glass in goodbye.
The path here is not linoleum; it’s a substrate the robot knows, though, it’s gravel. It weaves a telltale two-line trail as it bumps along towards the green, and the worms must be thoroughly shaken and mixed by now. On either side the path is fenced and inside are more people-parts; arms, legs in the dirt, whole bodies lying in repose and various states of decomposition. On one side are pale pink beasts, almost reminiscent of worms and of people except for their roundness and their too-many legs. The robot lifts its lofted sift attachment at them and they run from the fenceline, until the little robot on its long path is alone.
Eventually the gravel ends and the robot is on unknown territory; on little blades of green in formation, hundreds upon thousands spiking from the soil. The robot is uncertain of this and tracks further, until brown, green-edged towers peel up from the earth. The ground is twisted, uneven, packed with hard dirt. Not good for worms; no way to get in.
The round-faced robot goes in a little further. A list of agriculture is rolling through its processor; it settles on trees, forest and grass.
But the round-faced robot knows dirt very well; therefore it knows the mud as it sees it, rolls to a stop with dust and earth packing its tire treads. It tests the fresh patch for alkalinity, for acidity.
The numbers are perfect.
It upturns the first few passengers from its sifter, then unlatches the face and body compartments. There is less scooping involved on the reverse side and worms tumble free involuntarily, a falling like rain. They patter to the earth in little clumps, wet heaving clusters.
It tilts and buzzes, ushering out even the last, reluctant few. The new mass begins to sink in.
It, the robot, the worm-happy code in a small, plastic body, ceases everything. Every last programme, every standing directive, until there is quiet, mud, and the worms. In its log, it marks off one final delivery.
Fulfilled.
—
Stephanie Batt is a writer and production editor from Ōtautahi Christchurch, now based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She is a founding co-editor of the publishing collective circular. She also enjoys abandoning semi-developed novels in her spare time.
