Originally published in Phantasmagoria


This week's Bloc Feature, 'Assia' by Anthony Kuiper, was first published by the Australian online magazine Phantasmagoria. Bloc Features is our new project in which we aim to promote (and yes pay!) talented writers from the Writers Bloc workshop – publishing them alongside established and emerging writers from Australia and Overseas. 

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Edited and selected by Raphaelle Race


 

Assia

 

You were so casual about it

Your mouth open on hers like a cat’s yawn.

When I saw that hitched-lip scorn unfurl

It broke me.

 

One day I’ll make a booboo to cut through

All of this. Cut through you.

 

I’ll hurt you.

 

And I’ll do it this time.

So that when I’ve crept

To the length of the line

To the sea sitting blue, sitting fine.

I’ll have won.

 

My eyes melt back at me in the rear view. Hot and damp as the sunset.

Two drenched hornets.

The sea makes black streaks down my cheeks.

 

I’ve torn it.

The letters you gave to me,

The fetter we share. ‘Quiet now. Quiet now.’

 

Yes. My hook bore our meat, 3 years

But now no longer.

Not while you keep pulling us down.

He tumbles around and weeps in his seat.

Out, and clean now, my hook swings neat and free.

 

I hold to nothing now.

And the slack of my foot lets it all go.

Rolling slow.

Buoyancy brief. Water’s tow.

 

They drink the wheel. 


Editor's Note

‘Assia’ melds piercing imagery and gliding rhythm to form an authorial voice that strikes the reader the minute their eyes trace the intricacies of the work. The piece ‘cuts through’, it ‘hurts you’, and it promises much in the opening stanzas. ‘Assia’ upholds some of the fundamental tenets of what Phantasmagoria – and the artists we publish – represent as a publication. We want our work to strike you, embrace you and challenge you with the passion it oozes and the life it has captured. We call ourselves a ‘living magazine’, weaving a human patchwork of creativity from across Australia – and the globe. We are not-for-profit and all-for-art, supporting the cultivation of the talent of young writers and furthering the experience of established authors.

Works like ‘Assia’ can be found sprawled upon our eclectic pages as we strive to build a fluid collage of innovative material from the world’s most surprising corners.

Editor-in-chief,        

Madeleine Antonellos

AnthonyKuiper's picture

AnthonyKuiper

Anthony Kuiper is currently in his third (but let’s be serious probably not his final) year of an Arts Undergrad. He is majoring in English Literature and minoring in Creative Writing. He doesn’t like biographies. He does like the aesthetic of ’50s fashion but routinely mocks its celebrated misogyny and passive acceptance of heteronormativity. He likes warm and kind people. If you see him, say hello. He likes you. He knows he will – because if you actually do say ‘hello’ then you’re a cool person who isn’t afraid to put yourself out there and be nice to others.