The Wild Goose Literary e-Journal Anthology Edition

By The Wild Goose Literary e-Journal

A special anthology edition of The Wild Goose Literary e-Journal to celebrate the launch of Black Cockie Press. This edition contains the best works by early career writers from past editions of The Wild Goose. Contributions range from fiction to memoir, from poetry to essays.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Cockie Press
• Release date: Jul 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9780648136606

Book preview

The Wild Goose Literary e-Journal Anthology Edition.

The Wild Goose Literary e-Journal Anthology

Published by Black Cockie Press

Copyright Black Cockie Press 2017

Distributed by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

This ebook is licenced for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person please purchase an additional copy for reach recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

From the Editor

Summer Dayz

Found in Saudi Arabia

Getting There

First Impressions

Paula and the Sea

Deep Waters

If I had a Beard

Emma

The Postmistress

Stolen and Found

The Break

Hero Worship

Winter Solstice in Stockholm

Eroding Epochs

The Shorts

The Sunbirds

The Sunbirds have returned

The Ideals of Utopia

From The Editor

Welcome to the anthology edition of The Wild Goose Literary e-Journal. For many readers this will be your first encounter with The Wild Goose, so allow me now to take a few moments to introduce her to you. The Wild Goose is a literary e-journal focusing on the writing of early career writers. She began her life in December 2014 as a subscription journal published quarterly and open all year to submissions. Each December we choose a theme and the Wild Goose changes her plumage accordingly, she has run themed issues on Summer, Desire, The Sea and this December she will be Red. Examples of writing from each of these themed editions is to be found here.

For those of you wondering why, if we are named for a goose do we have a large Black Cockatoo on the cover? I’m glad you asked that. Aside from wishing to celebrate some of the best writing that it has been my privilege to publish over the past few years, this anthology edition is also the first publication from Black Cockie Press. An independent small press that I started in April of this year. In 2018 Black Cockie Press will be opened for submissions of novels, though the first novel to be published will be coming out in October this year, which is exciting.

I’d like to finish by saying that I hope that you enjoy this anthology edition of The Wild Goose Literary e-Journal. And that you will return here in September for our next issue.

Natalie Muller – Founding Editor.

Summer Dayz

Maive Jackson Collett

Jeff jumps on each concrete slab with protruding iron bits for a safe passage across the creek. The gurgling sound dissipates a little as it makes its way closer to my house. I live across from the park and its freshwater creek and sit further down near the concrete bridge of Sackville Street in the afternoons to write poetry alone. There are eels in a deep pond where Italian and Polish men come to catch them, invading my seclusion in the grass near the bull rushes. The federation and fibro houses squash together in Avenel Street Canley Vale.

Jeff and I meet at the top end of my street say hello to each other and walk on. He is short with white blonde hair that falls in a cowlick on one side of his face. We have our own language, in Year 7, in 1969, where we can express anything by leaving off the first letter of the word. I am medium height, medium build and have golden-brown hair, talking as I walk of the round building I want to live in, on the north coast one day when I am rich. It is made of white marble with inner courtyards and the sun pours through the windows.

We speak in this way for maybe fifteen minutes, walking through the netball field that once was a Chinese market garden.

****

By 1973, in Year 11, we no longer speak in our private language but walk through the field, as usual, there are Council employees mowing the grass; the clippings releasing a Springy green smell. The Binishell not long built and named after its Italian designer, Dante Bini, looms across the horizon making the backyard fences surrounding the field look small and brown. The circular dome nicknamed the Golf Ball is our indoor sports area and auditorium; shells are cheap, made from thin-layered reinforced concrete, quick to erect for the teenagers of the growing Western Suburbs.

We make it to school flinging onto chairs the heavy bags that have cut into our hands as we walked in deep oblivion talking in a language for two and two alone. Ken is there already, he walks a different way although he and Jeff live only houses apart.

Hi Maive, he said in a tone I cannot imitate that lilts up as if Maive is a question.

Hi Ken, I said, brightly pretending I did not hear the upward inflection.

He is tall, excruciatingly tall like a basketball player. He wears his tie done just a little differently. My eyes can discern the difference, like a secret society.

What’s up with you Ken, they said, got your pants down? There is a cruelty in the tone echoing through the long rectangular corridor outside the library.

The funny thing was though Ken’s parents seemed so middle class, so normal and so nice. His Mum says hello and smiles when I see her.

I think of music, my singles and albums waiting for me when I get home.

The same song sings in my head, not much of a distraction from the morning banter in the library and its rectangular corridor.

You are a brain. You are a goody-goody, teacher’s pet. No one likes you, said random others as I wait for class. Different days, different people but the tone was a mirror image of sameness. I do not know what they said to Ken or Jeff who are standard deviations from the norm, Jeff at four foot seven inches as short as Ken was tall. At Fairvale High, Jeff and I belonged together, rejected by others yet creating a unit of one.

Double period Maths on a Friday afternoon was always a killer. Geometry was a fraction worse. I remember standing on a chair then the desk. I do not why I was on the desk I was a good student otherwise, maybe they were throwing paper planes and the mood had gone so far away from the lesson it did not matter anymore. Chubby, red-haired Mr Wallace was one of my favourite teachers. The women teachers were mostly single but that was changing; Brigitte and her husband, both sports teachers were fun.

We walk home. Same Binishell. Same field of mowed grass. On Saturday myriads of young netball girls would come sometimes with parents, to play, stay fit and belong with the group. We walk across the white lines tattooed into the grass ready for tomorrow.

Please come home to my place my mother really wants you to come? Jeff said, here is another question by a shift in tone of voice. He looks into my eyes and wants something.

Okay, I’ll check with Mum, get rid of my bag and come straight over, I said.

I walk up the driveway and past the liquid amber tree, bright green leaves and branches shoot upward to the sun. There is a small fence to keep Mum’s dog inside the backyard. Penny a tiny terrier gives a little waggle of her stumpy tail.

How was your day? said Mum wearing the billowing tent dress with orange and crimson geometric patterns, my strongest memory of her at the Hills Hoist clothesline, pegged forever in a photograph.

Maths was a bit wild but the rest was okay, I have homework for next week. Can I go to Jeff’s house? His mother asked to see me.

Okay, dinner will be at six, said Mum. The heat of the day and the sweat of the walk make my brown and white check uniform smelly, just normal smelly neither good nor bad. I throw it onto the green and blue paisley quilt my Grandmother bought for me that covers my bed, knowing a cleaning fairy will come and make it better when I am gone.

Walking to Jeff’s, I cross the creek by jumping on the cement lumps with metal protruding. I walk down the road alongside pale fibro houses with brown grass the heat burning into the ash felt, overheating my rubber thongs and making a blue shadowy haze that rises up into a furnace sky. Jeff is outside his