HEAT Series 3 Number 3

HEAT Series 3 Number 3 spans vast distances, taking us from Canberra to Cambridge via Mexico and Manhattan. In fiction, Madeleine Watts, Kenneth Chong and Aniela Rodríquez share vivid stories of desire, withholding, and biblical revenge, while poets Iman Mersal and Jarad Bruinstroop offer perspectives on beauty and oppression. Essayist Kate Crowcroft contributes a piece that explores the history of the tongue, switching deftly between the personal and the archival. Robyn Creswell translates Mersal from Arabic, and Elizabeth Bryer translates Rodríguez from Spanish.

Contents

Madeleine Watts Australian Capital Territory fiction
Kenneth Chong Small Talk fiction
Jarad Bruinstroop Five Poems poetry
Aniela Rodríguez (trans. Elizabeth Bryer) Cain’s Feast fiction
Kate Crowcroft Tongue Broken non-fiction
Iman Mersal (trans. Robyn Creswell) Five Poems poetry

Frontispiece by Caroline Rothwell

From the issue

She said to him, When a woman informs you that she’s a little drunk / this is actually a warning that she’s liable to collapse at any moment. / And when she tells you of a lost happiness / she means that you’re responsible for giving it back to her / on a silver platter, like those knights in the stories of Caliphs / who return home with the heads of enemies on their spears.

On that day in Canberra we had been together thirteen months. Steady, happy months. We owned Ikea furniture together, had combined our books, were joint owners of a Turkish kilim, a record player, and a vibrator. Maybe we would start gardening. Maybe we would get a dog. Maybe we would have a baby, a girl, with curly, black hair.

As a man writes this down, he calls to mind those many instances in which he wished he was at home, reading. He would say to himself, I wish I were at home now, and then picture himself huddled up with a book of no particular title, but nevertheless certain that the pleasure and comfort he found in that imagined tableau would exceed anything before his eyes.

Nobody in Rome cares / that I have begun / to devour you. / In the hostel this morning / and again tonight. / Even on the basilica stairs / while the nuns pray inside.

There are many ways to break a tongue, and there are many ways to recall its power, not only as an instrument of speech that shapes sound within its home of the mouth and palate, but as an organ involved in knowledge acquisition, sense making, flights and figment.

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HEAT Series 3 Number 3

Contents

From the issue

Five Poems

Australian Capital Territory

Small Talk

Five Poems

Tongue Broken

Editor

Designer

HEAT Series 3 Number 3

Contents

From the issue

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