Story by Jan Aitken A week with Madame Pushka went totally against all my saner instincts. A whole week in my apartment with a querulous, demanding, fussy eater with a very uncertain temper was tantamount to a prison sentence, except that I would be out at...
By Kaye Paton Apparently my resilience is hanging in, waiting for an opportunity, and then moving forward towards new vistas with hope in my heart. My parents, second generation ‘Anglo-Aussies’ with small country town Protestant childhoods, juggled their own parent and sibling conflicts, and their tensions with...
Older dykes recall the glory days of feminism. What attracted them to it and how it impacted on their lives. Pam Ledden 1938 - 2004 I find that listening to others today, and the other five who've already spoken, is a very hard act to follow because...
I am offering my poem as my way of confronting the terrible situation in which I find myself. I am 55 year old Australian woman and my partner, who is American, is 68. I recently spent a year living with her in the US on...
by Kate O'Brien When my women have departed trailing their young perfume through the garden, silver striking silver as their singing charts their steps, I come in from the balcony, kick the sandals from my feet and let my day gown fall. In the leafy lamp-light youth returns to breast and hips plump radiance plump glamour. Nipples...
by Steely Lips Strong-limbed, she strode along the beach with a jaunty air. It was sunset. I watched the huge golden shape slip into the water. Slowly, it dropped from view leaving a pink and purple stained sky. The tide was coming in fast; there was...
by Lesley Summers I awoke with a start, my head aching from a hangover. I kept my eyes closed. The sounds and smells weren't right, I thought, this wasn't my bedroom, not my home. I heard traffic rumbling nearby and smelt indefinable stale odours accompanied by...
by Clement Wood My morning jog took me round a small bay of the inner harbour. The track I followed had been properly set up by the local council with stretch bars and boards, seats, dog excrement receptacles and all the apparatus for the inner city...
by Clement Wood © Well it wasn't my original plan to spend the week before Xmas minding a fast moving almost four year old girl, but these things happen. I was moving on to a new job after New Year and had given myself a month...
by Kate Mulready London, 1976 She is on the bus from Heathrow to Victoria. On the top deck, Alone, except for another woman, about her age, with a backpack and wearing an Italian scarf tied around her head. The woman is self-contained, still. Wisps of dark hair...