CONTRIBUTORS

Rita Tognini

Rita Tognini is a WA writer of poetry and short fiction. She has worked as a teacher and public servant. Among the themes she likes to explore are the relationship of language and identity, the intersection of the personal and the political and the consolations and constrictions of family ties. Her work has been published in local, national and international journals and has won prizes and commendations. In 2018 she was selected for the Peter Cowan Writers’ Centre Emerging Writer Program.

Deaf Sentences

The audiogram maps my soundscape, plots landslides in high frequencies. The audiologist tells me I hear like the elder I hope to be in twenty years, or more; says my cochlear hair cells are in disorder— dead or distorted, their …

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Landscape with Family

Karri keep watch over mill town, basin bulldozed of trees. Rows of timber houses, weatherboard and corrugated iron corralled by closed-picket fences. Gardens where weeds spread disorder. On the dirt road a family poses for a photo, a triangle of …

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Stand-off

Prague Spring Photograph, 1968 The Prague crowd jostles a tank– soldiers, just boys, at the gun turret. Legs stretched out, feet crossed, one seems relaxed, but a tense torso and Kalashnikov negate the casual pose. His comrade’s leg dangles over …

Posted in 93: PEACH | Tagged

In the Belly of the Whale

If Jonah’s whale swallowed an ocean liner it would become a roving Atlantis — a doubly submerged city crossing from equator to Antarctic from Arctic to Tropic of Cancer. Would propellers pollute acoustic channels scramble the whale’s sonic songs, strand …

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged