my clothes don’t match today such a simple thing to turn con­fid­ent strides into frumpy shrink­ing such a long way from flow­ing ochre silks or scar­let coats; my mind hunches in con­cert, nar­rowed, pinched, as if the scope of thought per­mit­ted dir­ectly cor­rel­ates to style…

When we were young we watched incan­des­cent flick­er­ing images of people rising like a sea from train sta­tions, koy­aan­isqatsi in the Val­halla cinema on Glebe Point Road late at night and we swore we would never become one of these face­less creatures on escal­at­ors, on…

My sister unknow­ingly let me in on a secret today. In our family, there are no dimin­ut­ive nick­names of affec­tion for grand­par­ents and great-grand­par­ents, merely a rollcall of pat­ronyms: Grandma Ber­sten, Grandma Levine, Grandma Bass.