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Edition #1 2021!

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Lily Godfrey (Year 9)

Vita Lawson (Year 10)

Frances Till (Year 11)

Atom Gush (Year 12)

Cadence Chung (Year 13)

Time's Great Debt

          - Frances Till, Year 11

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Can we take a moment

Of course, but from who?

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Great time sits in her lofty palace

And guards her treasure well

Sweet death is a poor beggar

Has naught to give or sell

Dear God is kind, sure

But I fear too much to steal from him

But you pick my pockets

Of far more than moments

You take years wrapped in precious stars

You take clocks gilded and old

 

But trust darling,

I know what my time is worth

In pretty pennies or weight in gold

So when you reach the gates to Hades

Your ledger patterned red

You can replace the ferryman

And it won't take moments,

But eons

To work off that debt

Image by Jon Tyson

fig-tree

   - Cadence Chung (Year 13)

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i'm trying to bring her back her with grass-stained skin falling asleep in the back seat thinking what a cruel unjust and horrible world we live in where reading in the car gives you motion sickness i'm trying to bring back the blur of words under passing streetlights slurring between worlds one on the page the other moonlit dim and smelling of petrol i'm trying to make it alright again see my heart isn't aching see i'm not longing see i'm back there where the wasps crush their papery skins against the window to try and get a hint of that sweetness that stickiness of youth and did you know wasps sometimes lay their eggs inside a fig and grow inside them bursting its thick flesh i'm always afraid to cut into figs because what if the wasp flies out with no window to hold it back what if all the figs fall to the ground and rot goddamn you sylvia plath for coming up with such a succinct metaphor but no i'm not aching no i'm not longing i'm back in the misty morning of a school trip anticipation bubbling on my tongue i'm there in the winter when the first onionweeds have bloomed stinking up the air and the first daphne on our bush has come out and my mother has picked it and put it on the windowsill to look at while she does the dishes see i'm not longing i promise i promise that you and i saw each other across the orchestra pit on a boring trip when neither of us liked the beethoven that we met one uneventful morning while playing on the same liminal campground bouncy pillow i promise i'll find myself in any other lifetime than this one let nostalgia feed me its bittersweet lies like panadol crushed in honey see my heart isn't aching see i'm not longing

Iolites - 

     Vita Lawson

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Io smiling. Io is pretty. Io reaches out hands for me to hold the fingertips. Balmy hands and delicate fingertips. Io is strict. Here is Io angry. With a quick mouth, and prejudice. Quick grief. Io is mercy. Here is Io forgiving. Forgiving me for stepping out and crying out. Io is love. Here is Io loving.

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This is what I am told.

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No, I say, ‘Io is love. Here is Io leaving.

Here is Io leaving me behind.’

 

And then they shake their heads at me. ‘Io didn’t leave us behind, be patient’. They think they are patient.

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I am patient, and I have waited long enough to know when to quit.

 

Io isn’t waiting for me.

 

I have waited for so long that I don’t fit the shoes I used to wear. I have held my breath and waited for them to let us in. Held my breath until my face was blue.

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I envy their pretty buildings that are so elegant they could fall at my clumsy touch. The psychedelic stained windows. The purple flowers. Did you know they have no sickness in Io? Nobody is ever ill there. They keep it out with us, to fester and buzz. And it buzzes so loud.

 

We live on the edge of Io. What we have here is the red dust and what they have there is the moon cool. What we have here are the weeds. The brown stems that twin into your socks. That scratch your legs and leave white salt grains of dry skin. What they have there is the azalea. The pretty purple flower. The petals that make millions.

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What we have here is drought.

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They have that too.

I come from...​

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   - Lily Godfrey (Year 9)

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I come from the branches of trees

I come from the wind and the rain

I know the taste of freedom

I know the smell of pain

I come from a loving family that I cherish although

I know the feel of being alone

I come from traveling the world and always coming home

I know the sound of friends that I've known for too long

I come from knowing where I am and where I wanna be

I come from changed perspectives that are now part of me

I know my scars though many, by heart eternal or not

I've opened my soul for you to see

that I'm not broken just finding my way

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What is left when

all else is gone?

       - Atom Gush, Year 12

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Wealth is the blood of the world

It flows like a river,

goes in and out like the sea

And most importantly,

without it, you die

 

Take an object,

a chair, a pen, a car

How much is it worth?

In hand, in bank?

For that is all it is

A value, a sum

 

Everything has its price,

and the price will be paid

a coin for a killing,

a dollar for a death

Little written promissory note,

for what service were you exchanged?

 

Payments bind us to each other

We need not hide no more,

behind the hollow skin of virtue

The power of obligation is stronger

than any idea of right and wrong

 

All exchanges, all relationships,

all trades and deals of any kind,

should have their own currency

A physical token of being

Harder to break than trust,

less losable than memory

Die and only you are broken

Your bond lives on

 

A silver coin for friendship,

hear the glint of gold for love

Paper with the face

of long dead politicians

to ensure the keeping of promises

 

However would it be taxed?

How much is 15% of your friendship?

Would you be able to afford it

after two years of inflation?

Does a shortage of friends,

make yours go up in value?

 

Hm, you might say,

but what is a coin?

What is a contract?

What do any of these numbers mean?

Nothing, you might say

It is all some social construct,

an illusion of our perceptions

A dream

And soon we might wake

 

Money might be some great lie,

but is there no greater falsehood

than things can be elsewise measured?

That any other oil

can make the machinery of society

run smoothly?

 

The train must go on,

its wheels must keep turning

And without money,

who will pay the driver?

who will buy the fuel?

 

Chant your songs,

throw your bombs

From what were they woven?

Understand that you,

like everyone,

work at the whims of capital

It that launches wars against itself,

wars that only it can win

 

Wealth is not the blood of the world

It creates faith as can only religion,

like the sun, all orbits around it

You cannot fight it

You cannot escape its gravity

For wealth is the soul of the world

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