Suggestions

January 2024

The Drifter

When autumn wind sighs over mitchell grass downs I look for you stencilled black against the coppery glow. We speak of simple things living a lifetime in small moments, daily doings, a dripping tap, the leaky pipe. Shifting the kettle to the
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Madeline’s Mirror

Madeline’s mirror told her she’s fat. It appalled at her shapeless dress, covering a chunk of flesh. She looked at her broad shoulders and big breasts, which reminded her of a pile of clothes that no longer fits her. But Madeline
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Feelings

Like shivering stars sprinkled over a black carpet of tonight, the silver bubbles rise from the bottom of the ocean of my mind and like the stars, linked together into animals and heroes – all by us, they, too, linked together,
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The Kitchen

My grandma didn’t have a kitchen for a year and a while more. She hadn’t become my grandmother yet. A just-retired husband and dwindling family income brought her pots and pans out on the courtyard of the one-room hovel they had
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Not The Wife Material

It was time for my parents to find a suitable boy for me. It gave me exciting encounters, interesting revelations and a name for my Substack account. This was during a two year period when Udit and I were ‘on a
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Dikarya

In what universe counting chances  under grey skies  like paper flowers.   I thought there might be a chance fragile, uncertain opening into night sun.  So many words flowing hot as lava pyroclastic, our disaster  on the move  one last entry 
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Of Black Birds and Grandmothers.

                                                   Words lingered on the iridescently blue screen in one of those days that felt like any other day that had gone by. The glare was too much to bear and the words too familiar to go inconspicuous to lay  buried in
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Red Lipstick

‘I was her friend even before I was born.’ This thought raced in my young mind as my mother, and I crept silently to Lily’s mother’s room. The room was huge, with a high ceiling and windows with ledges and ornate
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Transcending Boundaries.

Transcending Boundaries, Diversity and Inclusion in Australian Fiction Book Publishing. Diversity and inclusion in Australian publishing continue to be under scrutiny. The Australian Publishing Industry Workforce Survey on Diversity and Inclusion, released on 31 August 2022, referred to all sections
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Summer of the Pigeons

Summers are magical in Calgary, the Canadian city I have called home for the past twenty-five years. The city is transformed from the harshness of long snowy cold winters to the long awaited bright sunshine that brings an abundance of
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Growing up with Afro Curls

Life in the 1970s and 80s was not easy for a child, school was full of bullies, teachers were yet to be sensitive to child psychology, and parents were not too eager to be concerned about their children’s mental health. It
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Supper

Lately, the sparring had become something of a routine, or perhaps it had always been, she mused as they ambled home from a friend’s place post-dinner. Bathed in the eerie glow of a full moon, the sparsely arranged English country
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Divorce Stigma

Sometimes I truly wish to be a thing, just a thing, Rather than a human being. No emotions ,no heartache, no tears. This human life is only a misery. I am not from zoo or other planet, Yes I belong to
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Alternative Masculinity

We surely were annoyed, rather uncomfortable, looking at the PDA of the middle-aged couple.  Dr.Harihar Panda and his wife Mrs.Savita Panda were my guests that evening, along with two other friends from Odisha—Dr. Manas and Dr.Shubhra. All of them except for Savita
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Poems for Gaza

i) Dear Gaza When this is over I will come to Beit Lahia and help Mosab plant strawberries for Refaat. I will bring watermelon seeds in embroidered pouches for the children. They need the distraction. I will clear ash from the
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Forgotten Soul

The old man reading Alistair Urquhart’s hardcover Forgotten Highlander! but did he sit in front of me in the small mall lounge for the same reason as my own sense of lostness with that loss of love? that I will never
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The Orchard

MY WRITERS’ BLOCK does not exist (or so I’ve been told); its name is the very  pulse of this story, yearning to be unleashed from the confines of my churning  chest — a  writhing  tangle  of  Medusa’s  serpents  itching  to 
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Now I Understand

Grief crawled out from under the rock. It always does. Now I understand; the varicose veins, the heavy breathing, the conservation of handprints, deeds, a will and the daily ‘evening walks’; they were all prompts before the final words, before the
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Silhouette

Slams against window The hissing breeze Making foggy shadow As it cease Tiny dew drops Fall in streaks From the reed on slope Standing in bleak It is almost midnight. I wake up with a start. For an instant, I
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The Room with a Sea view

Kohl-eyes, lush-hair, skin bathed in glean and two chandelier earrings – those were the remains of her on this wide, soft morning by the looming sea. Jaganlal felt he was on a high ship and soon his building, this bay
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Reading the Signs

Down the road from Monique Barnes’ apartment block was a tennis club at the base of a rainforest. From her balcony she could see the coaches on the court, hear the thwack of the tennis balls as they rallied with their
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The Three Women in my Life

The Three Women in my Life: Lessons in Courage, Resilience, and Triumph “Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie.” Many afternoons after I returned home from school in 2002, I would memorise lines from this wonderful English poem. I was hooked on
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Flame in the Dark

The candles burn bright illuminate the night hold back the terrors braving the dark clouds the old moon in the arms of the new moon foretelling a storm. Thunder, lightning, whipping rain announce the coming of the storm. The high winds
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Obedient Isolated Wife

I I fell in love recklessly with the man of my dreams. Polite as a knight he swept the floor beneath my feet. He dazzled everyone with his presence but paid attention only to my needs. The day he proposed My heart
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