customer asks where you’re from. you reply, auckland, and somehow he hears, start guessing, instead. he talks over you, japanese? you look japanese. are you japanese? you move over to the grill and turn all the knobs up to high heat. the flames reach out to you, tiger orange and desperate. bacon rinds curl up into carbon crisps. your three fried eggs are smouldering, but you leave them there, yolks beaming. until soot falls from your eyelashes, blushing your cheeks. until the sun turns away, saying that she’s seen enough.

 

Emma Shi, from ‘THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT’

Fabulous cover art by Nirvana Haldar, excellent interview with Shu-Ling Chua (a Melbourne-based essayist, critic and poet) and stellar writing from young New Zealanders.

Check out the contents page and go exploring. Starling has its finger on the pulse of new writing – as it says in their aims for the journal:

‘The young writers featured here will shape and drive what New Zealand writing is to become. Starling is a chance to get a glimpse of where they might take us.’