Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose 2023 – 2nd place short story   “Who wants to hear the story of the luckiest birthday ever?” Sally said, sitting down at the head of the table. She was bone-weary from the hot oven, but buoyed by the faces gathered around her extendable dining table. She shook her hair back […]

I often wonder if that piano is still there. What a horrible instrument it was, with that cloying echo, that dull tone. That summer, Henry and I took it apart, the wood cutting tiny nicks into our knuckles, our faces smudged with graphite powder. We found an old tuning slip in it from some twenty […]

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. At least that was what his mum said, but this this time Rob wasn’t wishing for something big like a bike. He just wished people would stop making such a big deal out of his friendship with Kylie. It wasn’t as if he liked her because she […]

Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose 2023 – 1st place short story   And so, after everything, after all of the long years of waiting without hope, all of the attempts, the missteps, the seemingly endless gaps and silences, Esther is at last here, in the agreed place – Le Café Bleu on Boulevard Charles Guillaumont. She […]

Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose 2023 – 3rd Place hybrid   I saw you again last night. It was the summer holidays and we were playing on the beach. “Katie – bullrush! Tagged – you’re it!” I took in your panting, gasping face, ruddy-cheeked from the strain of chasing – your eyes of that marvellous transparent […]

Rare air, pale light, beyond       up south, old world,Rakiura.           Step ashore bush masks the way         watching blue shadowswhirring wings, waves         hush        wind stirs leaves, I like to write on a veranda, between inside and outsidethe house and myself       …