Gusts

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Craig White

Shelf Camp, Mount Anne
He tosses you a silver hip flask:
Drambuie warms your cockles.
The slew of Milky Way inches overhead —
static cracklings in a vaulted otherness
as seas plumb down, down.
Sharp-edged stars quiver.
A sailor’s eye (his hand like a sextant), charts
celestial objects and their pinch-pull currents.
You are miniscule and light.


~
Wear and tear made an absence of you last year
among mountains, plateaux, and saddles,
~


Copper Cove
Your shirt is a spinnaker come loose,
your hat blows up like a pulled lip.
You kneel to small wonders:
a crescent shell, purple-shaded,
fading to egg yolk — a week-old corky,
and here an ossified tree limb with a crook —
a bent and scabrous knee,
and there — baby sea spurges.


~
forests and button grass plains, lakes and coasts.
~


Summit, Mount Geryon South
Perched on a dolerite column,
fine-grained dark grey,
scuff-marked with lichen,
legs dangling and stubble-jawed,
you behold
a rookery run wild.1


~
Your memories’ leavings of these places
~


Lake Elysia
Afternoon light tightens:
a piece of glass held to the sun
kindles Mount Geryron’s flanks.
Breeze agitates the negative:
spires and hung-bellied clouds tremble,
crack of blue (a ruffled sea),
gnarled pencil pines and crinkle-cut-leafed
Nothofagus gunnii —
lake’s edge woodblock prints.


~
you love, buffet you, drawing open
~


Archers Knob
You clomp across the bridge with its wire mesh,
tapping a ball pein hammer on a sheet of tin.
Grendel backwater lips between the treads.
Spindly melaleucas lean and loiter:
old men getting under the feet of old women.
Their flaky paperbark canoes drift and spin.
Obscured by the paperbark forest, ducks, herons,
bitterns and grebes, each a musical note.
In coastal wattle and amongst leaf litter,
birds flit and dart and sing.
A wattlebird warbles a gargle and cough.
Three yellow-tipped black cockatoos
sharp-beak seed-laden banksia cones,2
alight and criss-cross each other’s flight paths —
flock into the loose wholeness of a jazz combo.
All along the trail the hopeful auditions of frogs
are the waterdrop sounds of flicking
a finger at your hollowed cheek.


~


the shining fastening of Aeolus’ oxhide bag.



Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Freight

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Wes Lee

i.
A man nodding on the bus, tired from keeping everyone
else alive. Trundled five nights home.

ii.
Balloon men spiking like lunatics in the forecourts.
Rain spatter on the windshield.
At 20 km/h, these are the places for visitations.

iii.
‘Let’s get rid of this,’ he said as he touched the clear
hospital wristband, slowly pulled my arm to its length.
Snipped that which had grown under my skin.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Bangka → Australia

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Josephine Shevchenko

No Tom Toms in the 70s, growing up
was knowledge acquired like palm
trees, tall as the rain. At six I cracked my forehead
on a kombi’s bench ftch ftch ftch ftch, forming
a new topography a nurse’s sickle and a zip-shut
line. On my map road tar bubbled like tiny lungs
and the kitchen steamed words like ‘campur’ and
‘menggabung’ Who am I now? Ubud aged 9 buying
a Kylie Minogue cassette. Name on a map, geography
unknown. My walkman singing “ooooh
locomotion”. And then economics reared
like a newly woken volcano and kabumi!
My Earth shook, latitude and longitude split from eye
to tongue. Yana’s flat, cane basket tossed peanut shells to
the breeze and the papaya tree lost its head. My artless brain supposed itself enough.
We moved to Australia ‘for good’; weatherboard & horse dirt, brown crescent fingernails
I hid beneath my desk. A new map with white-washed school-yard and taunts
I didn’t understand. Who am I now? Grammar School gorilla girl,
compass-less and shrunk like an ant without a line. ‘You’re so ugly!’
in a boy’s spittle, ‘Too poor to get a TV’ in pulled hair: My classmates
marked me like cartographers I learned to walk without myself wearing my
leg hair like indifference. Down the road, between an iris’ purple lips. A
bee is sucked in, a creature sure of entry and a koel cries again and again. “Are you?
Are you?” My only friend is marked too: eczema wounds like blood-countries on band-
ages, eyes like orbits in depth-of-sadness brown. “You collect lame ducks,” said a teacher,
but I was one too. I’d learned that Kylie wasn’t cool
but failed to learn what was. We didn’t do
cool in the tropics

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

prayer (xxxviii)

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Jonathan Chan

Melbourne, Australia

after Nam Le and Gang of Youths

over the undulating roads and
the graffiti lined alleys i asked if
the concrete is as alien to the land
as the land is to the nation, statues
on horseback imposing over the
blooming gardens, marble grounds
the shrine to sacrifice, a facsimile
of the parthenon, engraved with
traumas of the pacific theatre:
Malaya on one column, Korea
on the other. in a corner
of the city the brokers describe
the ephemera of the spiralling
patterns, the seven sisters and
the dots, the animal footprints and
bushfruit. the nations within,
beside, against the nation,
acknowledgment without
reclamation. jangling guitars
ring and ring, the aching voice
resisting resignation. how silence
will not fall in the shadow
of regret. how hurt will not deplete
a willingness to try. how everything
contends to keep the heart tender
and strong.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Not Enough

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Brant Angelo S. Ambes

For so delicate, we carry 270
bones. For so mighty, we lose
64 bones. A bone fits inside
a dog’s mouth. A dog’s mouth

fits in a fresh meat. We grieve
over what’s fresh, for who wants
a cold body? A body fits inside
a plane. You sleep to kill time.

Can you kill something not
alive but beats fervently? Time
gives way to unearthing, the
cage rattling open. A cage

can fit a bird; the bird fits in
a cage. Why will you escape
when there is a hand that feeds
you? The problem with

confinement is being fine. What
I would give to fit in this world.
The world fits inside me. Swells
in my palm. Carry boulders in

outer space. You cannot say it’s
heavy if there is no gravity. Why
does the plane resist the crash?
What else can fit in this lifeless

bird if not bottles, and what else
can fit in bottles except your laugh?
Your laugh can fit inside me. I can
fit inside you. You can fit all of me.

A poem fits in my fingers. Can I
fit you in one? I have returned
from the land swallowed in flood.
My hands can’t fit water in them,

but they fit in my chest. Your heart
fits in your chest. Dogs bite bones
when they grieve for fresh meat.
The bird took flight and did not

look back. I drank your laugh,
smashed the bottles, shards deep
in my skin. My wings strained
on the weight of your heart.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

What the shadows told me

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Micaela Sahhar

(for Ellen and Abdullah,
after إميل حبيبي and واصف جوهرية)

As it is written, they had become
bigger than the plane of Akka

for (in the sinking sun) they merged
with their own shadows. Of whom

Habiby writes, perhaps it was a portrait
of the poet as a young Palestinian, holding

his mother’s hand. On one precise day,
anno domini and a late Autumn Monday

the great diarist and oud player left the stone
walls of his temporary shelter, exchanging

monastic sanctuary for a life of vagrancy.
But unable to bear it he afterwards left

entirely while the shape of him remained, to range
between his Jerusalem home and Jericho

(first place of exile). To reason with it was
to know : the inscription of gone things

need no reminders. Within the border
of a photograph, six by nine centimetres

(though likely conceived in inches) I finally see
two more dark lines beside my little father’s. In

Amman, coaxing their smallest one to face a light
they bent across their bodies in late sun, which

joined the poet of Al-Bira, and his mother, growing ever
vaster. Around this time our lives (Darwish, Sahhar

and Jawhariyyeh) were indistinguishable. But
since the discovery was made only recently

what the shadows told me was an answer
to the question Habiby poses on page sixteen

(of several editions) that to the contrary we
will never disappear.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Thanks for the Opportunity

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Adam Ford

I’m trying to work out how you’re supposed
to reconcile your career path with the doors
people close on you. I’m trying to be polite and
professional in the face of professional, polite

and impersonal rejection. OK, well, thanks I say,
thanks for considering me, have a great day,
thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for all those
learnings and discoveries. Thanks for the brand

new no thanks to add to the collection I shuffle
like worry beads while trying to find the balance
between just being myself and being the me you
hypothetically might have wanted if you hadn’t

had to make such a difficult choice. Maybe if I had
smiled more. Maybe if I’d talked less or rehearsed
my answers one more time. Maybe if I’d set up in
front of the bookshelf or used the blur filter instead.

Maybe if I’d paid that hundred to that interview
coaching agency. Maybe if I’d clicked more hearts
on old bosses’ posts or signed up for premium.
Maybe if I did the vacuuming when I said I would.

Maybe if I left less mess on our cookbook pages.
Maybe if I was a more attentive son and brother.
Mean old Mister Meritocracy drops me a DM to
tell me that bad things only happen to you know

who and reminds me what it means when you
don’t get what you think you deserve. And I say
maybe life sucks or maybe I do, either way I did
what I did and they did what they did and now I

have a what next to come up with. It’s not you it’s
us and It’s not us it’s you are both equal to No, and
our lives go on, some with and some without me.
Would have been good, hey? Oh, well. Moving on.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Meniscus

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Rachael Wenona Guy

We who live in the fissures between
smooth monoliths of acceptability
find no easy peace.

Doesn’t grass sway predominately in one direction?
Don’t murmurations thread across the sky
twisting and pulling into skeins of consensus?

If society were a vessel we would be the crazing in its glaze
speckle in the celadon hairline crack blemish –
all things of beauty and fascination
nonetheless.

If humans were follicles on the vast scalp of the earth
brushed smooth by the comb of averages –
we would be kink cowlick stray lock.

If I were dog I’d be lean and hungry scavenging
at the edges of a cantankerous pack.

If I were fish suspended below the meniscus between
embrace and exile I’d patiently wait lipping at morsels
as they drift by.

No. That’s not quite what I’m thinking –

I’m picturing a vast ballroom, the synchronised turn and sweep of the dancers
who comprehend the dance. I’m picturing the lone body who’s failed
at the choreography and is spinning in an idiosyncratic dervish of their own –
Spinning, spinning in a pool of light
attuned to a different
kind of music.
That’s all.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

The neighbourhood of Little Looking

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Kendrea Rhodes

The paradox of laughing wings, glinting in shadows and corners,
silhouettes in mirrors not telling anymore (they made stuff up).
Patterns everywhere.
Waves of vanishings and everyday houses,
everyday adults gliding glorious mowers
over evergreen grasses. Our neighbours
on the corner, kings of the court and nothing to hide, see
their grand wall-windows and double trilling doorbell. A vow: never
press that bell, not even if dared. But odd days arose,
a robin darted to my side of the fence saying
it would go to the shops (they made stuff up). We’d talk and play. I was young to hear about
patterns. Sleeping beauty and the sovereign prince. Suburban stories, particles glimmering
in sunlight, scoured dutifully, daily. A Disney tale, catlike in a quantum way: alive, dead,
alive, dead. And the robin flitting over my fence, spinning in a kaleidoscope of whisperings
(they made stuff up). Together we traced the cat’s movements, the drop of its shoulders,
coil of its haunches, twitch of its tail. And then. The long summer. A dead cat
when distracted and the robin alive. We laughed and danced, and the fence stood strong. We
ribboned off rainbows, singing to the sky for sanctuary—until the season of leaving Little Looking.
Until siblings flew further than fences (they made stuff up). The cat,
alive, repeating patterns. Patterns unsettled only if
seen. We saw
too late. We.
made. stuff. up.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Atlas

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Emma Ashmere

Only a long neck they said, born with or did it grow bend as she squinted north over sea sky pews perms fences maps expectations, and like the poet of the pearl-wearing era whose bare neck needed London advice she’ll find her own London dripping into an unheated typing pool, the ailing empire engine, musica industria, numb-handedly hammering acrostic bills, iambic inadequacies, receipts for nozzles, flanges, diaphragms, female-male plumbing attachments, the ha ha vocabulary of joinery, haven’t you got a boyfriend yet, dawn as drunk as dark as dusk, temp confidentialities, long necks like yours need 1980s pearl-equivalents, yes but what about swans, a boa of their own, black swans cutting diamonds through locked Mayfair ponds, the smell of another river where the murder was, her schoolgirl shout easy-oar or easy-all or easy-awe, plausibility is everything, she’s short enough scrawny enough as the oarless fifth to the four-part rhythm of muscle, limb, rudder-string, wood, water, gunwale, brass, blade, slide, feathering, is this belonging, her swerve around a floating blue-faced possum and Popeye the tourist boat wins a race apparently, winning means being thrown in, but the neck brace, unlike movies you can’t look up or down or left or right or back, it’s there where their oars drip, their landing leaving place, heaving up the wooden tub, the boys get leaner lighter sculls, diamond water dripping where blood was, reenacted, cop as actor extra audience, the drowning of, the dragging in, her feet stuck with blonde grass, the sweat-halo of stroke, bow, two, three, sliding towards her back again, peering over them, through them, she loved some of them, murder happens to wrong joinery, she’ll fly north young, return with a string of jet at her neck, the line between before and after, the accident we never talked about, at last the MRI, two effacements, blockages, C1 C3, proof part-architectural, part-redirection, her atlas rearranged.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Housewife’s Prayer

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Basudhara Roy

Let me be tight
small
so dispensable
that when my own name is called
let me not be considered.

Let me keep less
so that it is easier to dust
and let my life be plain
patterns proving perennially
difficult to clean.

Let me not be white
so that I can be run
with coloured laundry.
Let me also be wrinkle-free and spared
the irony of the ironing board.

Let me be edible in all seasons
non-allergenic, lean, palatable to all.
Let me contain more dietary fibres
no cholesterol
my broth only mildly sweet.

Let me come
with no warning.
Let me not need refrigeration
or gentle-handling.
Let my packaging be strong.

Above all, let me be well-labelled
and have a short expiry.
Between
manufacture and best-consumed
the period not long.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Geebung

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Barrina South

bruised purple clouds
find each other
on the evening storm
riding down the last of the light

bracken ferns hold
droplets
The Poet’s Wife
intoxicating with fragrance

joining the orchestra of poets
sitting in zazen
soaking scarred ankles
in the dam

I wonder
Do I fit in?
Do my words reveal?
Do my words work?

mook mook, calls
full moon to rise
lichen tea had a peculiar taste
I can’t quite remember the night

dawn, awake
a black feather
beside my head
at my feet, a broken vase

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Pacific American Anxiety Gallery

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Jeric Smith

after Rigoberto González

PORTRAIT ONE: SOLDIERS’ RETURN

On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, Japanese soldiers and Charlie Smith walked through
Dense jungle together
On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, Japanese soldiers killed Charles Smith
Buried him and others on Police Hill
On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, Japanese soldiers executed the Englishman
Paces past desperation ravine
When you expect a landing to be made by the enemy, dispose of the prisoners in a hurry
So the Japanese soldiers revisited the site of execution to dig up prior bodies
On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, an Englishman by the name of Charles “Charlie”
Smith, alias “James” was not a prisoner of war by nature
Charlie or James or Jesuit missionaries or the Untalan-Hondonero family
should not have been prisoners of war
On or about 29 December 1944, Who is war?
Japanese soldiers cremate the bones and rebury them in a single hole

PORTRAIT TWO: ISLANDERS EXTINGUISHING FIRES

Emergent fires suppressant contaminants
Deployment systems recall crash dummies
Young boy hands young girl hydrogen atoms replaced by toxic fluorine
The palm tree rhinoceros beetle-infested fires upending its uses and myths
Young girl catches fire on thighs of young boy
Decimated ecosystems kingfishers mated in captivity
Young girl touches young boy’s burning back creates limestone breccia
Young girl spits in hands brushes through young brother’s flaming hair
And kelps and sea forests sway in de-oxygenating currents
Young brother hands young sister his eyes blurred with neoplasms and lymphomas
Young sister throws into the ocean their diseased gaze drifting so far they are now
What we call horizon the farthest diasporas
Their hands holding nowhere without fires
Their bodies archipelagos radiant jungle heat

PORTRAIT THREE: RITA BORGIA SMITH ON PAPER

I find the name of his lover, Rita Borgia Smith, my great-grandmother,
In a report, an analysis to support an official recovery operation,
Non-confidential version
Great-grandma Rita, sneaked food to her husband, Charlie, while he was in captivity.
She traveled through the jungles without being detected at least three times.
She gave birth at least three times. Their children: David 18, Elena 15, and Henry 1
When Charlie was hidden in the jungle of Palau
Bullet residue on paper, 87 pebbles on Philippine beach, saltwater crocodile skin moccasins
Worn on invaders’ feet
Pixels on screen, BDUs on American soldier backs as anchors dredge native mangrove fauna
Into capacious silt
Rita dreams in uprising of silt her youngest child gnawing sweat-saturated cloth
clinging to her body
Rita feeds Charlie prayers of wild orchids and bush warblers and morningbirds

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Consulting

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Tim Loveday

we needed a consultation session to agree to future consultation sessions; no one could quite agree on who should be consulted; the issue was too loaded an issue; we needed to unload; we needed to reconsider our loading; this brought into question the concept of we; the easiest answer was a piss-take; would some time in France exceed our expectations; who could afford that; a we then was problematic; compress the zip; we staked our claims on stake holders instead; the barbeque joint was sure to isolate; we isolated some holdings; a carving knife; a tuning fork; we tuned our attention to simple solutions; blood let & porterhouse; consult the consultation with; did this sound threatening; we met them in the bathroom for a piss-take; we wanted the motivation of fear not the fear of motivation; we followed the meeting with a movie; we went and saw a movie; no one remembers what it was; not about but a boat; what motive there was for the movie; it moved us into seeing; seaside; this state was stateless; into another state of being; not interstate; state your intentions; we housed you; we were blindsided & bereft; we were porter; we needed a game plan; we planned a game that might draw out a drawing; this would reveal itself; pictionary; we were drawing answers on butcher’s paper; the butchers were not happy about this; they did not want to be drawn on anything; the paper had to go; there was two sides to every one paper; we targeted box-making; free juice boxes; we practised targeting real problems; we looked outside of ourselves; this hurt our eyes; some real people showed us some reals; we wanted to zoom in on what needed to change without the loaded-ness of zooming; too quick; change had to happen slowly; the zoom was not loading; we felt tense; we were stuck in a particular tense; this mode of thinking was incompatible with a mood of consultation; we are expectant; consultation requires precision of time & effect; we affected a mood; we can’t agree on that; we debate the preposition & the conjunction; some take issue with what’s been issued previously; the past they call it; the previously gone & done with; the previous issue; we’re not responsible; we bring in a consultant; shake hands; these palms are as wet as an icy road; this cold & icy interaction concludes things; they regard this as redundancy; they kind regards our email; we hope for all the best; it is a slippery affair & they tell us as much; we hear mulch so touch grass; this is touching; it is much more mulch so we pursue other reserves; we are open; we organise a field trip to out in the open; sunlight is the best disinfectant; we want it regulated; relegate; disinfect the best sunlight; we time our entry; we question the validity of this finding having found a dead foundling; the foundling findings are foundation-less; the toxicology report indicates the presence of a report on a toxic ecology; don’t report this; how to dispense of the foundling then; we are skewered on this issue; we skewer left; we skewer right; we’re skewering the foundling; we aren’t against this sort of waste; we are against it; we don’t want to waste time; time is timeless; don’t get ahead of yourself; that’s wasting away our future; you seem tense; no that’s present; do yourself a favour; present the present to yourself; we can’t agree to that; what to do about the past imperfect; that’s already happened; that’s happenstance; no happenstanced; quit droning on about it; it being that other thing; that drone; that other way of being;

meanwhile a children’s hospital collapses;

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

The Nativity

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Alpine Moldez

Dinner is early tonight because of the Mass we’ll hear at dawn.
We must eat and sleep at once if we plan to wake early at dawn.

I crushed some garlic: cloves as pungent as the whispers of our shame.
You poured soy sauce into a bowl. Dark, opaque like the skies at dawn.

I sprinkled some salt and laid some bay leaves; gentle, as in prayer.
As in the mercy that once descended on a manger at dawn.

You then sautéed the pork tenders with pepper, ginger, and the rest.
The oil spits were sharp, but they delivered. Like rosy rays at dawn.

Palm vinegar stings, so it comes in last. Assaulting, but needed.
Its sweetness lingers once the sourness is steamed, revolting at dawn.

Our adobo simmers. There is a child taking shape in the pot.
Like hope conceived in silence but born with chuckles common at dawn.

Not all rooms are ready to take us in, like Joseph and Mary.
This Airbnb is our stable, our home till the Mass at dawn.

Outside, streets smell of burnt bibingka and nutty puto bumbong.
Inside, we pass the rice: fragrant and sticky like dewdrops at dawn.

We hum in the steam of adobo with rice—two people, happy—
feasting on their own secret Noche Buena, ready for dawn.

Love, your name is the Mass I get up for, my prayer without shame.
I sign it with steam and salt, like adobo glittering by dawn.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

The Cracked Vase

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Topher Shields

The cracked vase
humming its one note to the dust—
te hā slips through its ribs,
the breath of what was held still moves.

Somewhere, a word breaks open:
awa, remembered by water,
reeds recall the pulse
of hands that shaped their name.

Belonging flickers here—
where tongues cross like tides,
the mouth a horizon splitting—
each word a small act of creation.

Each shard sings whakapapa,
each seam holds a name half-remembered.
Ko wai au—
the question and the answering pull.

Even in fracture, sound endures,
hā carrying what light neglects,
a fragile song, broken sing,
a heldness remade in listening home.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Still Seeds

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné

Daughter, drink the bitter things first:
there is almost always medicine
in what stings most. For instance,
each leaf must steep in boiling water
to do its work. Each blade of grass
must first bruise to become medicine
vervine, soursop, fevergrass:
this is how we teach the tongue.

We are what grandmothers planted
with their eyes closed

arthritic hands already knowing
what they could not yet see.

We are what sprouts up in backyard buckets
unannounced, to spite the concrete,
to spite the hard earth, to spite
history, hurricane and drought
to spite schools and scripture

This is how we survive: root, rhizome, refusal.

They didn’t know we were seeds,

whole histories set in compost and top soil
hands remembering before language does
A civilization of medicine sleeping in asphalt
bitter caraille creeping through chain-link
shining bush pushing through concrete
like a blessing that forgets how to die

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Homes to go to

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Ali Jane Smith

Sunday afternoon at The Coniston Hotel
we are the worst pool players in the back room
losing slowly.
Black beer and a pressed-tin ashtray.
Ross is setting up.
It doesn’t take long
mic stand, mic, plug in the guitar.
The narrow toes of his boots
point to a corner and a door.
He starts to play and sing
so anxious his throat looks like the trunk of a figtree.
In the future Ross will sound velvet and relaxed
a sound you can roll with, meant to be.
We haven’t heard that yet, we’re getting this
urgent, intent version
while we lean across tables
clacking bigs and littles.
We should go home
you have to go home sometime.
The later, the worse.
Go home before Ross finishes singing
you don’t want to miss a note, but do it
walk out while the blues fill the room.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Balkon

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Airini Beautrais

When I see the stacked balconies
bright with petunias, begonias
I remember ‘balkon’ from German class.
We had to find an apartment
for a character in the textbook
from a set of ads. It must be under a certain price,
and must have a balkon.

Everything here is so neat and tidy, except the graffiti.
Today I see a smiling set of cutlery sprayed on a wall
with speech bubbles, reading
Have a knife day
See you spoon
Fork off

A balkon is desirable
because it is the only three square metres
you can cultivate
when you live in an apartment,
the only outdoors.

Last night I dreamed I was back in German class
which was strangely reassuring
although I had the wrong book with me
and was learning alongside primary school kids
who knew their genitive better than me.
I realise this is not a park for sitting in.
This park has a sole purpose – to walk through.
There are no seats.
And here I am, having failed to grow up,
one child with a bare bum lying in the grass,
the other roaming in the wild flowers.

I have my hair in braids, and have taken off my shoes.
I bought men’s sand shoes, thinking they might fit better,
and men’s socks. But they don’t.
I imagine them being worn by a man.
He would be neat and tidy,
and possibly somewhat creepy.
And you would want him to fork off.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Lenina Crowne

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Thuy On

I’m awfully glad to be a Beta
I swallow my soma like a good girl
(we are such stuff/as dreams are made on)
who wants to be an Alpha?
they work so hard and they’re frightfully clever
they call me pneumatic
what does that mean? I’m just a Beta

I like going to Community Sings and the Feelies
(screen touch on your skin makes me delirious)
I’m glad I’m not an Epsilon or a Gamma
and Deltas wear horrid Khaki
but why doesn’t the Savage like me?
I want to lie with him unzipped
everyone belongs to everyone at the World State

but my incomprehension needs to be preserved
intact at all times I can’t connect I can’t emote
a cold bottle against my flushed cheek to cool
ardour for just one person I am spoonfed longing
never the entire meal never the swell of seduction
if only I were wrapped up in this man’s wild colours
to reach out and kiss the lids of his sleeping eyes.

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Afternoon Blouse

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Natalie D-Napoleon

After Winnie Fatovich

beg: begin // before Mum got married in 1950 she had 17 tops that she made for herself // sl ss: slip stitch // hands worn like sandpaper from her work in the market garden // bp: back post // she moved // yoh: yarn over hook // adjusted the gauge of her yarn // trtr: triple treble // increasing and decreasing the number and tightness of her slip stitch and treble crochet // htr: half treble // she knew sometimes you need to hold on tight and other times you need to loosen your grip to ensure the right fit // approx: approximately // she spoke two languages fluently // ch: chain // translated for the whole community // fp: front post // with crochet she spoke another language with her hands // inc: increase // the infinity scarf as Mobius strip // rnd: round // the mathematics and geometry of women’s craft // dec: decrease // Mum and dad didn’t throw anything away. // rep: repeat // When she had children she undid all those 17 tops // rnd: round // because she couldn’t afford to buy wool to make jumpers for us // turn: turn your work to start a new row // afterwards // Winnie dreamt of that afternoon blouse she pulled apart // alt: alternate // the boxes of pencils she had won at school // beg: begin // dancing the kolo at the town hall as a single girl // sk: skip // the life she could have had if educating women // cont: continue // wasn’t thought of as a waste of time // ws: wrong side // Winnie made sure all four of her children (girls and boys) went to school // This was like therapy for her // she would crochet and encourage us to do our homework // join: connect stitches, often with a slip stitch // fo: fasten off //



Quotes are from an interview conducted by Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon with Joyce Michael, Winnie Fatovich’s daughter on 19, Nov 2025 and A Migrant Story: The Fatovich Family in Australia, by Joyce Michael, self-published, 2025, p. 158, p. 161, p. 373. Used with permission.

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cycling to Ashburton

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Brent Cantwell

because of Steppenwolf, I ride my ten-speed
from Christchurch to Ashburton
but really—
ironically—I pedal my pedals towards outskirt-silence.

if I’m honest with the wolf-o-the-steps
it is for the outskirt-silence
howling,
scoff of cogs and wheels, aspiring—

seeking the wanting, wanting the seeking
& almost there . . .I rise,
rise to the work
rise in the morning to the rivet, the rivets—

then I hear the creak of a picket fence by a creek—
its timbre tuned, polished & raw—
its voice—if I’m willing to rub a few kind words
together—sirens a welcome but never lets me in.

so, I quit and dump the bike—
the only spine holding my frame erect
creaks
beneath my skin still—

whimper of the wolf; calcium of the will.

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yoga at home

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Matthew Jenkins

behold the majestic stream
& the emergence of koi fish.
see the ripples that expand
like years, like the rings of A
giant sequoia tree. deeper
ponds reach for the ocean,
for scandinavian passages
for fjords of greater volume.
the chasm of stress will not
confine you as breath work
lends the passage to climb
up free from the tether now
cut as you ignore the sound
of traffic & the approaching
children as they breach the
hard borderline of A distant
room. & books hit the floor
as they pick up speed down
the hallway slipping on the
carpet runner as one slams
into the linen cupboard and
rises again, surging on like
zombies as their footsteps
get closer, A glass shatters
as they collide with A side
table majestic as they burst
through the partially opened
door & proceed to jump all
over my best ever chaturanga.

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Wild Strawberries

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Erin Wilson

So, after all these years
of wondering about purpose,

after the sex has drained
from our bodies,

and the white hair
has wicked itself to our heads,

we have figured out the great mystery
of why we met.

And while I am not strong,
and am in pain when I bend, walk, or lift,

I bend to pick you up, to carry you
out into the days of tall grasses,

fern, and wild strawberries.

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