Some Photos & Writing From Meg Mundell.

13 reasons for a crash.

Joyride, theft and moonlight, drifting black
Car spooked by a storm, like horses get

Gravel loose, the grader made a guess
Origami test for Jaws of Life
Woman driving nowhere on the map

They were young and speed’s a greedy beast
Bored to the bone, they tempted fate
He was an old man. What can you expect?

A swerve to miss a non-existent fox
Mechanic meant to fix the brakes was sick
Spider on the dashboard, fast and fat

Two seconds stolen by the medication
No witnesses, no blame. An accident


Lightning on the golf course.

grass is gold
in thick magazines
the colour of silence.
platinum blondes drop hints
in rich fonts
& horse-shoes toss up sparks
in ads for crash proof cars.

believe the chiming
at your peril: metal
has an insect heart.
it jerks to the spider’s song
shoots through red, bites
holes in living dirt
seeks the fast way home.

metal loves damage:
abandon the ferris wheel
before the storm.
knives, towers and
the golfer’s bright swing
all dream a dark-boiled sky
where flesh & electricity
kiss, once


Small Town Drives.

what are you doing . look at me like that again . it’s not my fault . this car runs better fast . no over your shoulder like that . your skin tastes like milk . here hold this . there’s no street sign . she was nothing like you . let’s just go now . touching your face . do you have to take the whole thing . because I’m sick of talking about it . does what run in my family . now the handle’s broken . nothing just thinking . who says it belongs to them . it’s okay once you get used to it . don’t cry baby . your skin tastes like milk . only when I was a kid . we should burn it . here hold this . yeah sure I promise . turn around . you understand me . we already organised the money . give me your hand . I forget what that key is for . I can stop whenever I want. why did you give it to him . your skin tastes like milk . wait till it gets dark . hey where are you going

"Meg Mundell is a Melbourne-based Kiwi who's written journalism for the Age, The Monthly and Sydney Morning Herald; short stories for Meanjin, Sleepers Almanac and New Australian Stories; and some other stuff to pay the rent (brochures about spam, corny speeches etc.) She's doing a creative writing PhD about places at the University of Western Sydney. Meg's first novel, Black Glass (Scribe), is out in March 2011. www.megmundell.com"

A Short Story by Joran C.A. Monteiro

No-one ever heard the shot.

Johnny was a boy. Had been a man. Always stayed a boy. Never cared about anything. It never occurred to him to ever care. He was asked what his problem was, but he would do one of two things: he would explode, or he would stare at his shoes. Something dark lived in him. Or had lived.

One day Johnny was found in a cheap motel room. He had rented it for half an hour. Johnny was dead on the bed with his brains rorschach-ing the wall behind him and a warm revolver in his hand. In the bathtub laid Lucy, one of the local hookers who turned tricks on the strip. Johnny was twenty-three years old. Lucy had barely reached forty-five. She’d been in the trade a long time. Had been, since Lucy was dead too, her dead eyes staring fish-like through the now cold water at the yellowed ceiling and heaven beyond it. She was naked, her clothes laying in a little heap on the floor next to the tub. They were soaked. Lucy had died with the tap running.

The door-man had broken into the room after the half-hour-guests from the room below had complained about water leaking through their ceiling. First he knocked on the door. Then he knocked and yelled obscenities. A colourful scene. A rapping of the knuckles on paint-flaked wood. Then a worn boot to the thin door and it was open and the door-man saw his own mortality spun on the wall and he thought: ‘Not again,’ his jaw slacking down idiot-like. His shift was supposed to finish in thirty minutes. A head-ache.

He called the cops. They did not ask for the address. They knew the motel. Two cops in uniform arrived first. They secured the crime-scene with yellow tape that said ‘Do Not Cross’. Then in came two detectives. They heard the door-man’s story. Then they took a look at Lucy. She seemed to be smiling. How strange. They noticed how her black pubes did not match her platinum blond hair. How her now permanently hard nipples stuck out of the water. She had big used breasts. Why was she smiling? There were no signs of struggle. No signs of violence. Drowned or something else, the autopsy would have to tell. Johnny was easy: suicide. One hand clutched the revolver. The other clutched a piece of paper. One of the detectives pried it from his fingers. It read: Don’t worry about me mother, I’ll be fine.

'Joran C.A. Monteiro is Dutch. He lives in Melbourne. He writes poetry and fiction. He is working on a novel.'