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2018 Spring

Literary Journal

This is the second issue of The Three Lamps (T3L), an online literary journal from the University of Auckland.

T3Stories features short fiction by Josie Shapiro, Danny Lam and Anna Woods. T3Essays offers creative nonfiction by Jamie De Jong, Aldwin Matawaran and Faith Lodge. In T3Poets we showcase the work of Richard Pamatatau, Anuja Mitra and Hebe Kearney. T3Shorts are pieces (of exactly 300 words), in this issue by Carolyn Cossey, Karen Holdom and Sarah Ell, along with Joshua Hetherington and Ashleigh Smith. T3Books features excerpts from three recent books by Auckland writers Michele Leggott, Rachel O’Connor and Tom Romeo.

Brother Francis © Kevin Rabalais2018 SpringT3ESSAYS

Brother Francis

I was reading about Chaucer’s Monk, and I thought: I know this person. He lived just down the road.   Chaucer’s Monk is not your usual religious man. He is rebellious, fully alive and in complete control of his existence. Our resident Monk in Puhoi was called Brother Francis. I…
Jamie de Jong
November 20, 2018
Bulin © Kevin Rabalais2018 SpringT3ESSAYS

Bulin

I was afraid to admit that he was the type of person that I simultaneously feared and envied. With his handsome tan, bronze hair and caramel eyes, this American dream boy named Sam drew silent admiration from all of my schoolmates. During that sweltering afternoon, Mrs. Latorre introduced him as…
Aldwin Matawaran
November 20, 2018
Rooster © Faith Lodge2018 SpringT3ESSAYS

Rooster

There was a guy standing opposite me on the Tube. Head shaved to hide a receding hairline, face creased like a used napkin. Wouldn’t look out of place on Jeremy Kyle. I call him Dad, but he’s more like the weird uncle you warn your friends about before they meet…
Faith Lodge
November 20, 2018
Three poems © Wen-Juenn Lee2018 SpringT3POETS

Three poems

Ethnic beef If you don’t mind me saying you eat like a savage the Australian lady said at the Wellington dinner party. Are you by any chance a person who is ethnic said the marketing woman for tinned corn-beef. Does she know what an ECG is said the ginger-haired doctor…
Richard Pamatatau
November 19, 2018
Three poems © Kevin Rabalais2018 SpringT3POETS

Three poems

Hearing the Ice Cream Truck My friend’s flat is strung with all the souvenirs of living: birthday cards hanging from the fridge, blurry shopping lists in her childlike script, a lesser-known Penguin with spots of rust. One day we’ll make choices without doubt; we tell ourselves, as if telling makes…
Anuja Mitra
November 19, 2018
Three poems © Kevin Rabalais2018 SpringT3POETS

Three poems

Karen Carpenter skeleton-woman — i am sorry. * the clock has left you, your eyeballs empty pits where the light goes in. * you are cracked marble, fissured obsidian, a network of crisscrosses broken, and you should be whole, brimming * a round-faced moon, a silver silken shadower, night cast…
Hebe Kearney
November 19, 2018
Daughter, Seal © Josie Shapiro2018 SpringT3STORIES

Daughter, Seal

The year my parents died I married Nils Fisker, a big man with shoulders wide, arms strong from a life at sea, hair a sandy blonde. I lost Mama to a wintertime infection and Father didn't return from the winter journey to the ocean beyond the ice. He was sailing…
Josie Shapiro
November 7, 2018
Field © Kevin Rabalais2018 SpringT3STORIES

Field

There are no adverbs in Xoi. In their place, the lexicon permutates a series of agglutinative super-verbs. Many of these super-verbs are in common use, and the creation of new lexical items is no rare feat. Children with only a few years of speech do so. These super-verbs give the…
Danny Lam
November 7, 2018
Whales © Kevin Rabalais2018 SpringT3STORIES

Whales

The cinderblock toilets were painted a childish blue, a ribbon unfurling. The grey heads of whales and their tails, shaped like upturned anchors, broke the surface. Each head had a single black eye, drawn in a straight stroke. Every so often, a drooping m had been painted in white. I…
Anna Woods
November 7, 2018
Auckland Shorts © Sophie van Waardenberg2018 SpringT3SHORTS

Auckland Shorts

The Street Where I Live Perched high on a spine of West Coast bush, the smell of wet manuka and asphalt retrieves childhood summers from their past. Beyond the crowning branches of a grand kauri rolls a wide macrocarpa-framed valley where dark native forest must once have lined the snaking…
Joshua Hetherington
November 7, 2018
Auckland Shorts © Wen-Juenn Lee2018 SpringT3SHORTS

Auckland Shorts

On the Street A cafe blackboard’s daily ‘nugget of wisdom’ promotes money, happiness, and crying comfortably in Porsches. A white Corolla slows at the lights. Electrical tape clutches waterlogged cardboard spelling a license number in sharpie, its liquefying letters birthing strange unidentifiable creatures. It convulses into Cromwell Street. Cardboard entrails…
Ashleigh Smith
November 7, 2018