Respond to 2025: Algorithm
The last time I fully inhabited this fleshbag
was in the hours after my iPhone 6
joined me for an ocean swim. Since then I’ve learnt
more about the algorithm than any sapien should.
I mark the passage of a day not by the sun’s primordial arc
but by ideal story times, the hours of peak engagement.
I ghost the dead zones where meatspace movements
preordain my audience’s absence from the cloud.
Where to draw the line between dopamine hit
and digital affliction? I tried to touch grass once but now
even the Windows background has husked to an arid brown.
Not in My Name
Despite what the government wanted us to do, we came here today in solidarity. Despite what you may be hearing in much of the media, there are growing numbers, huge numbers, of Jews around the world who oppose what is going on in Palestine every single day.
Respond to 2025: Graduation
Tonight you’re wearing purple
the colour of suffragettes
holding up half the world
did you realise that?
Palestine is Not for Sale
It is white sovereignty that brought Herzog here—white sovereignty, even though Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded. And that is the context we should really be talking about, the context that Minns and Albanese insist we forget. A context of colonisation here that allows so-called Australia to be an ally of the United States, which is also a settler colony, and of course Israel, the young colony.
Remember Gaza, Remember Palestine
In anger and grief, rage and shame, I want to talk today about relationality. I want to talk about what I have learned from being an anti-zionist Jew living on Wurundjeri Country and deeply committed to ethical liberatory relations with Palestine and Palestinians.
Respond to 2025: Five Friends Catch Up in the Group Chat
Isn’t this our third Eid in genocide / it’s Eid? / another day, another missed deadline / I am the worst mum, kids going to need therapy because of me / they bombed overnight — is your family ok? / this election, hey? / cancelled plans. again.
Respond to 2025: Elegy for a literary journal
It’s minor news, nothing deemed too relevant.
Two workers out of work, a loney welcome mat.
Subscribers suddenly without subscriptions.
Even the art house rags forgot to cover it.
A submission portal closed indefinitely.
Not Even Past
Grace Yee writes that Joss: A History (Giramondo, 2025) was written with ‘a strong conviction that the past persists in the present.’ Through a porous interplay of past and present, Joss expands what poetry is and can be: collage, palimpsest, polyphony.
Poisoned Crumbs: human rights and the LGBTIQ+ community after Bondi
Although prominent LGBTIQ+ organisations have endorsed the government’s plan to combat antisemitism and hate, the proposed new laws actually pose grave risks to rights and freedoms within the queer community.
Empty Words, Emptying Stages
By isolating one writer as a potential risk, the institution produces a broader chilling effect in which participation itself becomes precarious. Public debate shrinks not because anyone is ordered to be silent, but because speech itself has been recoded as the risk.
Subscribe
Support
We are a reader-powered publication, with no government or institutional funding. We don’t use paywalls and we pay our writers industry rates. If you want words for otherwise, please consider supporting our work.