zine review
Zine culture is cutting-edge, grass roots creativity at its finest. Welcome to the Fallyrag Zine Review pages.
Founders Beth Keating and Kate Nicholson have created a concept that aims to give Melbourne’s public transport travellers an intelligent and free literary alternative whilst providing publishing opportunities to emerging artists.
‘The theme for Issue Two is “Pod People”. So many people who travel on public transport bury themselves in their music and we want you to help us show them the train station life they are oblivious to.’
Here are a few extracts to give you a little idea of what to expect:
Extract from Gordon 6426 3651 by Kathryn Ledson (kledson@optusnet.com.au)
I pushed, willing it to come, imagining it working its way down from bowel to bowl. Visualisation, I think it’s called. I felt my face turn red. Nothing. I tried another tack – ignoring it instead. I looked around the cubicle. Syringes poked out of the used-syringe box. One needle had blood on it. I winced and looked away, rubbing the crook of my arm. I could never be a junkie. There was smeared shit on the wall. Graffiti poo. I wondered if the artist shat into her hand and then applied it, or if she fished it out of the water. Then I wondered if she washed her hands after, which made me think about the nut shop up the road where the guys stand outside, grinning at passers-by, holding out little tasting bowls of nuts and the like.
Extract from Stationary in Time, Lost in Space by Simon Smithson (smithson.simon@gmail.com & www.thedoubleagent.com)
All public transport stops have this property of being a kind of no-place, rather than somewhere in their own right, somewhere transitory and forever adrift in between two other places. While this is true of bus and tram stops as well as train stations, when waiting for a bus or a tram the effect is lessened by the fact that you generally take up a position on the side or middle of the road, still part of the rest of the world. On a train platform, though, you're on an outcropping of concrete and brick; a little section of space entirely separate from the streets and lanes around it.
Extract from Welcome to the Circus by Crystal Andrews (andrec01@student.uwa.edu.au)
What unfolded next can only be described as an animalistic free-for-all. Apparently, seeing a mouse drop a gorilla (Chad) to the ground on a leisurely train ride can elicit an array of entertaining responses. “Yeah, that bit was the genius of this plan.” Sean says of having Caitie sit, as inconspicuously as a moose can, in the corner filming passengers’ reactions. After seeing re-enactments of the most memorable facial expressions, I am inclined to agree.
Illustration - Kellyanne Gentle