By Brian R Sorrell
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
of pennies who smelled strongly of Canada Mints and old clothes. For the entire time I knew him, which was fifteen years, he lived in a little green house with his youngest son, Uncle Bill, half way down Grove Road, which ended in a cul-de-sac, which could have run straight through to Watrous Park had… Read more
is a fact I both realise and appreciate. I attribute this gift to being in the middle period of my life. A couple months ago I built a wall of bookshelves. During the project I cut myself once, strained a shoulder muscle into a debilitating spasm, but I never fell off the ladder. I might… 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
late. Let’s just take the car. So we loaded the boy and his backpack and his firetruck umbrella. I backed out of the garage, trying to indicate to Tanya there’s no need to shut the door. I’d be right back. But she’s not getting it from my gestures, so I click the automatic window switch… 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
When my giggling four-year-old runs over to me with a scribbled blob of paint on construction paper, yelling “look look!” and I instinctively ask him “what is it,” his grin fades and he stops giggling and he has to think about what to say. An unwelcome interruption by reason. He isn’t excited about what it is. He’s… Read more
Christmas morning always smelled of pine trees and new clothes, and it’s strange how April in the southern hemisphere reminds me of those days. The weather turned from summer to autumn on Monday morning, and with it comes a shift in wardrobe and attitude. I opened the front door and it didn’t stick in the… Read more
The day has finally come. Noodle realises it’s annoying and funny to repeat everything you say. “Everything you say,” he says. Yeah. Everything. Now please stop while I write this. I suppose it’s my fault, at least to some extent. I love to annoy him by pretending to mishear things. “Daddy can I have a… Read more
In the replica of the John Bain Toy Shop at the Canterbury Museum there is a doll house, known as the Historic Dunedin House, which on 22 February 2011 suffered damage in a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Little replica people still look on in dismay at their knocked over china and chairs, frozen in time. One… Read more