Autumn Leaves photo by Paul Brookes

PEOPLE OF A SENSITIVE NATURE ARE ADVISED THAT THE FOLLOWING EXTRACTS EXPLORE FAMILY DYSFUNCTION AND ABUSE ISSUES

Zero Gravity

Gayle J. Greenlea

Excerpt for 5 November, 2021

<chapter> Two

In a Darlinghurst apartment across town, Banjo perched in the window seat, eying traffic three stories down. He stretched his legs and pressed his forehead to the glass. A key jiggled the lock in the front door. The cat’s ears twitched to attention. The door opened and a trousered leg slipped through. Banjo snarled and shot out of the window to take cover under the bed. He watched the door ease shut as the stranger came into the room. 
        Ryan entered with the gait of the over-confident, dropping keys next to the potted plant by the window. He’d always been cocky, proud of good genes that gifted him with height and broad shoulders, prominent cheekbones and the dark curls he habitually pushed back from his forehead in his one unconscious gesture. All else was deliberate affectation. He was the rich kid who’d spent his fortune but not the entitlement…

-Gayle J.Greenlea

YOU’RE THE DEAD TO ME

First week – Missing – Day Five

Dead leaf says to tree.

“I will make a life away.

Join the discarded.”

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-Gayle J. Greenlea

is an American-Australian poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel, Zero Gravity, at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in St. Julian Press, Rebelle Society, A Time to Speak, Headline Poetry and Press, The Wombwell Rainbow, Fevers of the Mind, Kalonopia and The Australian Health Review.