Gone Lawn
a journal of literature
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Gone Lawn 36
Spring Equinox, 2020

Featured artwork, Broken Tulip, by Andrew Davis.

New Works

Nathan Anderson

A Name


This child sets herself with several blocks of different colour. Each of them is designated: first Mother, then Father, then Brother, then Sister.
The Mother block is first to move as she staggers the circumference of your living room pallor. Checking her way through the grim whites and light greys and eventual dark greys and blacks.
Next is Father who is stripped to his basest articulation and made to sing in view of your poplar trees and experimental elements.
Brother is left to his own devices. He chooses then to explain to you the reason for his hiding and the abundance of organs he has collected in your name.
Sister is sunflower, left to glow and bend in an easy breeze, protected from crows by a man clothed in sandpaper and soon stuffed to explode.
Each of these blocks is set down in water in order of expectation. First Father, then Sister, then Mother, then Brother. Each of them is washed and made to stand naked in blue light and are soon dashed to oblivion against rocks above the heads of birds and sunlight and Jupiter.
This water, once receded, is collected and named, each letter of this designation taken from the alphabet related to your father and his father after that. The letters are as follows: he, she, me, I, death, death, mother, father, paper, pen.
This child again retrieves her blocks as she has done in a heavy rain. This time arranging them by scent and sight and sound. These blocks become sand and wood and plastic.
These plastic blocks are the first to be evacuated through the elliptical shattering of stars. Neon reverberations their new name and fresh designation.
The wood is used to nail a poster of your religion in freshly minted green. Ripped down by passers-by with objective singularity.
Sand is left to do as it pleases and tells you it has become so lonely within this expansive hotel of red and yellow carpet. It longs to return to the moon from which it was taken.
This child is made to burn each of these blocks, taking fuel made from elephants' ears and tobacco. She ignites them and sits warmly and comfortably by the fire. Sister of tomorrow, child, child, child.


Nathan Anderson is a writer from Canberra Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Writing from the University of Canberra and is a graduate of the Oxford University Creative Writing Summer School.