SIMPLY THE BEST by NOAH REID. Poem by Michael Leach.
Soon each groom/ walks down a natural aisle/ with his sister & his canine/ to sounds of sincerest acoustic music.
PEOPLE LIVE HERE by RISE AGAINST Poem by Murray Taylor
...We weren’t ones for cliché/Unless performed ironically./Weeks drift by,/The comfort of familiar phrases,/Of gestures and faces...
LIGHTS by INTERPOL. Poem by Michael Leach
well-stocked op shop—/she sifts thru clothes racks/to find/an alternative/while I scan CD racks
SAN FRANCISCO DAYS by CHRIS ISAAK. Story by Virginia Muzik
Later, it’s six of us at a workmate’s one-room apartment, watching videos, drinking, talking. He and I sit on the bed, a purring cat between us. Kitty’s tail flicks against my thighs as he strokes one end, I stroke the other, our hands sometimes touching: poor kitty a conduit for the swollen energy between us.
ELVA by UNWRITTEN LAW. Story by NT McQueen
It’s a rhythm one could argue is difficult to not slow dance to and, in the sun and in love, I lifted her hand into mine and we danced together.
OCEANS AWAY by ROGER DALTREY. Story by Sue Dann.
Everyone has a playlist of pain, the songs that bring the sometimes forgotten, partly processed pieces of our past to come rushing to the surface, raw, to be felt again.
BLACK MAGIC WOMAN by SANTANA. Story by Martina Medica
Where I went to school, boys – men – didn’t dance. Not unless they were full of whisky bluster or beer bravado, anyway, and certainly not the way he was, his lithe body a study in confident, soft, expressive masculinity.
THE NIGHT WE MET by LORD HURON. Story by Samantha Lee Curran
The celebrant spoke, but I didn’t hear a word. I fell into a trance, absorbing every once-in-a-lifetime second.
RONE IN GEELONG by NICK BATTERHAM. Story by Vin M.
A piano is broken. Burnt, seemingly. A harp is stranded, unplayable. Chairs in a once lavish dining room are rotting.
DIAMONDS AND RUST album by JOAN BAEZ. Story by Vin M
Like a million fools before me, and a million more to come as sure as night follows day, I leave my virgin emotions unspoken, expecting osmosis to be a go-between.