Featured in
- Published 20241105
- ISBN: 978-1-923213-01-2
- Extent: 196 pp
- Paperback, ebook, PDF
Though he lives in a rundown unit
above a busy intersection,
the pyjama man
imagines that the sounds of the traffic
are the waves of the ocean.
It is not automobiles
that are passing by his window;
it is the crashing of waves into the shore.
He finds the sound of the ocean therapeutic
and becomes a man of peace.
His friends tell him it is the traffic,
the relentless sound of the traffic,
that has driven him mad,
that has caused this fantasy.
Their negativity
makes him even more determined
to believe the delusion.
Share article
About the author
Damian Balassone
Damian Balassone’s writing has appeared in a variety of Australian and international publications, including The New York Times, The Australian, Light, Abridged, The Spectator,...
More from this edition
Feeling our way to utopia
Non-fiction JANE AUSTEN WAS just twenty-one years old when she wrote her first novel, Sense and Sensibility. Today, we understand her works as more than...
Tawny child
FictionCarefully, Morgan loosened the fabric. The crying increased in volume. Eventually, the small dark head of a bawling, tawny child emerged into the clear light. Morgan looked at the child with her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, as if she were considering an heirloom of unknown value. Hans took the envelope from the fingers of the man in the blue suit and tore the gold seal. Inside were five crisp, dry banknotes. The man in the blue suit told them that such payments would be forthcoming every month, and that the child’s name was Many-gift in the local dialect, but they were to refer to him as Albert and raise him as their own.
Moon man
Poetry After Elizabeth Venn He circles the room five times, refusing to believe he’s resistible. I tell myself I won’t tilt for his stained skin, his predictable footwork. I’m...