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Voiceworks 81 Birthmark

The thing about birthmarks is you can’t ever get rid of them. Not even if you scrape, not even with a knife. Put your dishpan hands on the steering wheel, mother. Othello missed the school bus. Did he inherit the family cleft? A garble of origin binds his ear to your mouth, to your womb, to the homeland. Pencil on a beauty spot. A man slurs at the disabled sticker clotting an intersection, their windshield baptised by a gummy yob. 24601 inked along his forearm, scraping the window for a meal ticket. He lisps about his childhood, his breasts, his brother. You ask him, “Were you born from a bloody smile, knee-deep in swine muck, foreskin sliced, hollering faith?” Your pen blots his assessment journal, and he pulls up his t-shirt to show you the bruises.

Voiceworks #81 Birthmark features fiction by Jack Madin, Ariella Van Luyn and Matilda Grogan; poetry by Jalen Lyle-Holmes, Holly Voigt and Adolfo Aranjuez; nonfiction by Rebecca Howden, Giles Fielke and Jacinta Butterworth; and an interview with Look Who’s Morphing author Tom Cho.  James ‘U. Mangisi argues education will save us from breeding ourselves into extinction; Anna Angel asks us what really lies beneath our radiant Southern Cross; and Aaron Benson asks the music industry and the internet to play nice.

Also featuring work by Elva Darnell, Christopher O’Neill, Lauren Lovett, Danielle M. Binks, Kathryn Hind, Elisa Anne Parry, Michael Richardson, Neda Vanovac, Rebecca Anne Renner, Daniel Hogan, Joel Ephraims, Jeremy Poxon, Christina Cussen, Gillian Terzis, Virginia Tonique, Finbah Neill, Jess Bradford, Thomas Chapman and Aaron Billings.

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