By Brian R Sorrell
when it’s hot enough. Better yet, swipe a little oil inside the pan first and get it glistening. Set it on the flame — it better be flame if you’re cooking and you really mean it — and let it set until it smokes. This could take a few minutes, but it’s worth the patience.… Read more
Daylight fades along the passage, shadows darkening. A piano note echoes from the other side of an air vent made of steel lattice, embedded in concrete thick enough to hold up the earth and to withstand mortar fire. I am in a tunnel carved into a volcano called Maungauika: North Head, a strategic location overlooking… Read more
would run the machines at the concrete company behind our house, just past the hedge under which we’d build forts and draw maps from one pine tree to the next. The pine trees, the cherry trees, the apple trees would flower and bloom and soon winter would set in. And all the while, I’d run… Read more
. Not bicycles with colourful jokers. Just some old deck maybe swiped from a hotel, like that book of matches on the mantel never struck. The pattern was mostly green, though maybe jade you’d say if you were fussy. Looked like a close-up photo of jewellery box draws. The card box itself was not conventional,… Read more
“March 15, 1910 Grampie was” is a warning story. It is a description of life during a time in America that some have recently called “great.” In particular, the essay compares certain aspects of the narrator’s life in America, 1980 with aspects of his life in New Zealand, 2016, providing a insider-on-the-outside’s perspective of the current political… Read more
born. He’s gone 27 years now and I only knew him the first 15 of mine. That’s strange when I think about it because I think about him enough that “gone” doesn’t mean the same as it does for that fish that wiggled off his line that one time he took us fishing, or that bike… Read more
, the meaning of things, the things I write. I put ideas into words, but the words aren’t mine alone; they’re all ours, and I’ve no claim to ownership over something so sublime as their meaning once they’re out in the world. Lately I’ve been thinking about the scenes I write — and I don’t mean… Read more
climb up here with me,” so I did. The tree is a centuries-old pohutukawa at Te Toki Road Reserve on Waiheke Island, New Zealand. We’ve come here to visit friends who live down the way, and their Vizsla needs his evening run. So does Charlie. It’s nearly dinner time and the cicadas are clacking so… Read more
chirps, and those buggers hiss in a sibilant chorus this time of year. I wonder whether the Chinese fellas on the next bench over suffer this same tongue thwacking misarticulation. I wonder whether they, like me, unwittingly lisp in some similar manner under these conditions. Relatedly, I’ve wondered whether a murmuring crowd affects its members’ dominant accent. The… Read more
scent, were a perfumery to extract it, filter the aerated pollens of hydrangea and jasmine, mix it with essential oils and solvents, and package it in a fading yellow orange and green box to match the landscape from which it emanates. This is the scent in the air, but it’s not the summer scent we expected.… Read more
a corner and half way across the front of a closet door. The one in front stopped and the one in back carried on down the door and across the carpet, blue grey stain resistant, which turns out to be perfect camouflage for a spindly-tan long legger. I was sitting at the edge of the bed… Read more
and the bedroom smelled of rose perfume. The woman who once wore it had shoulder length black hair, which I know because I found one at the foot of the bed and a clump in the vacuum cleaner hose. No matter. It’s a clean-as-you-go, pack-your-own-linens kind of place, plenty warm enough this time of year… Read more
ranch slider and occupied flags that slide into place when you lock the bathroom door. Yet this is a farm house at the edge of an estuary, the mouth of the Puhoi River, the Whangaparoa Bay on the horizon. They call it the Schischka House now, but before Auckland Regional Council took possession, the family… Read more
because my cast iron skillet is the most valuable object we brought to the Schischka House, a hirable bach at Wenderholm Regional Park in Auckland, New Zealand. Well, the most valuable object except the car we borrowed from a friend, but that latches itself when you leave it sit long enough. Takes itself out of… Read more
* * * REDEMPTION When I was four years old I knew my phone number. Still remember it to this day. But I don’t remember much of my dad. I don’t remember him saying goodbye, but I wish I could. At least then I’d know for sure he did. I remember fear, falling into a… Read more