Description
Beyond the paradise of product lines, through an economic wilderness of hollow olives & glycerine drinks, past the invisible homeless & the ghost of Ralph Waldo Emerson (his mum bringing him clean laundry), up a steaming track covered by vaporous cloud—a man with a cowboy hat will lead your pony on.
Dear, dear reader,
If you could drop this issue on the floor of any bedroom:
Its bad sex, self-help gurus & Sunday school cake would grace your house with all the enthusiasm of an existential forest; its indices of maths & physics would elevate your pick-up lines beyond the reach of outer suburbia; its quiet work of saying things (like bees or ants aren’t still when they build things) would secure the satanic moment in your career—
—where finally your portfolio fills: archangels & mountain vistas.
These are our bodies, floating the surface.
This is the moment, built ab ovo.
This is our data, holy & retinal.
Erena Shingade
March 2018
VICTOR BILLOT is a writer from Dunedin, New Zealand. He has published three collections of poetry, the most recent being Ambient Terror (2017), & is a member of the Alpha Plan. He works for Otago University Press.
FREYA DALY SADGROVE is a writer & performer in Aotearoa. She has an MA in poetry from the IIML, & her work has appeared in various publications including Sweet Mammalian, Scum, Shabby Doll House, & The Spinoff.
LEE THOMSON uses the intrinsic gift with words his mother said he had to write about the spiritual aspects of Life(Death). He feels connected with the leylines of word & rhyme, & has become the poet he always felt he was. Maturity, insight & understanding… These are the poetic gifts.
ZACK ANDERSON (US) holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where he worked for Action Books, & an MA from the University of Wyoming. He teaches English in Denver, Colorado and writes for American Microreviews & Interviews.
MURRAY EDMOND is the author of 14 poetry books. Recent publications include Then It Was Now Again: Selected Critical Writing (Atuanui Press, 2014), & Shaggy Magpie Songs (AUP, 2015). He edits Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics, & is a dramaturge for Indian Ink Theatre Company. Murray lives in Glen Eden, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
COURTNEY SINA MEREDITH is the author of Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick & Tail of the Taniwha (both Beatnik Publishing). She has held various international writing residencies including the prestigious Fall Residency at the University of Iowa. She describes her work as an ongoing discussion of contemporary urban life with an underlying Pacific politique.
MANON REVUELTA is a writer from New Zealand. She is the author of girl teeth (Hard Press, 2017), & has previously published poetry in Sweet Mammalian (NZ), Deluge (US), Brief (NZ), & Turbine (NZ).
NAOMI SCULLY (US) is a woman, crossing boundary lines. Love the exploration of concepts & ideas, the languages that express them. Celebrate art in the design of all things creative, mechanical, physical, metaphysical, found in sacred space & its interaction with our secular lives. Believe in these intersections of beauty & geometry. Make change and inspire.
HARRY MORITZ is a mysterious illustrator based from New Zealand.
ERENA SHINGADE is a poet and arts writer from Auckland, New Zealand. Her work has been published by platforms such as The Spinoff, Landfall, Mimicry, Blackmail Press, Atlanta Review, Ka Mate Ka Ora, & the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. After completing an MA thesis on the Zen Buddhist poetry of Richard von Sturmer in 2017, she continues to research the intersection of the poetic and the religious. During the day she works as a publicist for Allen & Unwin.
