Gathering It All Together

The Story So Far…

Zarina Dara 🥀💃🏻

5 min readSep 26, 2017

This is a gathering of much of my older work, broken down in categories of stories, poetry and musings. Enjoy.

🔒 For Medium Members🔒

Short Stories:

Kali Dancing

Short fiction

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Under The Waves

Short Fiction

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Outside The Boundaries

It was after the passion, when you wonder what is left. I had to wait just long enough, then I wrote. Saying no hard…

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Experience

On lust and loss, faith and falling away

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Perspective on a One Night Stand (x2)

He Says:

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A World Apart *

A Monologue, in Poetic Prose

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Flash Fiction:

Elegy

My first week at Legal Aid, someone from Head Office hanged herself. Laura said she was found by a friend, another…

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Rag and Bone

Flash Fiction — from “Dig Within”

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A World Apart

Lit Up: Mad March Microfiction

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A Woman, Destroyed

Lit Up: Mad March Microfiction

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Homecoming

A twisted tale, of great expectation

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Reconstructed

Short fiction

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The Night Before Christmas

A Christmas Drabble – 100 word story

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The Bells

Flash Fiction (100 word story)

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Speak Again, Desire

Flash fiction, as poetry

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Poetry:

Wolf

a sensual fairytale, in Sapphic stanzas (with audio)

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Consumed

Red Onion’s confession*

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April Fools

For Nerine 💚 (a poem, with audio)

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One, Peace

(Elegy for Christchurch, and those we have lost)

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Valentine’s Day 2009

The Other Side: On Love and Death

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Relics

(of my desert days)

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Dear Gabriel

The Unsent Letter (a story in a poem)

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Morning, Victoria Street

Hometown views, in poetry — No. 1

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Boat Person

Reflections on homeland policy, New Year’s Eve 2017

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Octopussy Grabs (Part 1)

Or, Henny Penny’s #MeToo

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Motherline

I am the childless child of a motherless mother. To her, to be a mother was the dream. My dream was more diffuse — a…

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Uwan (Grandma)

A Response to “Love & Death: Creative Challenge”

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King, Departing

For Poppa

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Love, Well Lived

In the splay of fingers tinged with jagged grey of ash, my father sifts my grandma’s fired remains.

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Here, Now

A Poem With Audio

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The Awakening

A Poem with Audio

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Till Human Voices Wake Us…

Lit Up – April’s Prompt: Inspired Poetry

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Rapture, In Hue

A Spoken Word Poem, With Audio

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Requiem

for Love Forbidden, left behind

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Recessional, or, The Rake’s Reply

An Almost Love Story 💙 (in poetry)

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Elegy, or, The Wife’s Lament 🥀

Her Response to Recessional — A Spoken Word Poem, With Audio

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My Muse

(inspired by Stephen and Joan, and random Twitter chatter)

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For D.M.

“Sweets to the sweet; a poem for the poet” (with audio)

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Scar

The words unsaid (a poem, with audio)

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Rift

The still point in the turning world

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The Fall

For innocents, lost — a poem

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After Lindt Cafe (15–16 December 2014)

For Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson, in memory

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Gales

A Poem

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Cockatoo

At last he descends, white bird ablaze against the blue: late afternoon aerobatics show, and all for free.

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On Reading Alice Walker

“The World Will Follow Joy” — spoken word, with audio

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Word Child

Sometimes she’s born all in a rush, shining, complete —

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Fairy Dust

Tinker’s Requiem (spoken word, with audio)

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I’ve Opened The Door…

Spoken word poem, with audio

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The Delight Of A Sick Day

a spoken word poem, with audio

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White On Black

Cold War, Chess and Summer Fruit (7x7 poem)

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Tomorrow’s Fish’n’Chips

In Sapphic Stanzas

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For Earth, In Remembrance, On Her Day

Inspired by an Earth Day tweet; and to remember, every day

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the softness of his kiss

a one line poem (with audio)

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The Weight

A Poem With Audio

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Vigil No. 1

(May 2009)

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Vigil No. 2

(September 2009)

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Origins

“In my beginning is my end” * quoth Old Tom, which buds an idle wonder, what seeds pressed deep in childhood, sprung…

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Rake

An impressionistic sketch, in poetry

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Monitor

Watching from the canopy the beast moves slowly through the bark and leaves below.

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TODAY IS AN OPEN DOOR

Today is an open door — I hesitate for a moment, stay, uncertain, on the threshold of what is, and what may come to…

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Song Lyrics:

(Waiting For) The Grand Old Man Of Song

For Leonard Cohen, on his birthday — a song, with audio

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Mother’s Day Blues

Blues, In A Minor — With Audio (For World Childless Week)

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Happiness

A Song Lyric

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Start Again

A song lyric – with apologies to Robert Frost

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Roses

A Duet

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Suspended

Rain floats like feathers Suspended, in the air – Hovering over memories Too tender still to share.

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Weather Patterns

Darlin’ I’ve done it again, said the wrong thing — though I don’t know what it is that I’ve said.

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For Rose

Or, Only The Pineapple*

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Musings:

Vivid! (Sydney, 2017)

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…

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🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝🗝

Flash Fiction 🔓

Streetsuss Serenade, with tattoos

Happy (Belated) Birthday, JennL! ❤️

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Poetry 🔓

With Audio

I Am

A Poem with Audio

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Severed

A Poem with Audio

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Without Audio

Beauty

He asked

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Pretend

I set out one day To Be -

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Before

The promises to keep; the miles to go before I sleep

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You Said

You said I should be tougher, more outspoken; let it all wash over me.

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I Am The Very Model Of A Man

A Belated Sinterklaas Poem* (With Apologies To Gilbert & Sullivan)

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Aftermath

For Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016)

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How To Find The Words (and when to stop)

For National Poetry Month

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Love Song for my husband ❤️

(one day past his birthday)

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Let Us Go

With apologies to T.S. Eliot

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Haiku / Short Poems 🔓

Why Poetry?

Haiku

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If I populate my mind

If I populate my mindmedium.com

After The Fires

I went down to the wasteland And mourned for an old friend Then I wrote its epitaph (With sticks of its own ruin)

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Song Lyrics 🔓

9 November 2016 – The First 48 Hours

Re-View From Down Under — Seven Months On

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Voices

A Song Lyric

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The Happy Misanthrope

A Song Lyric

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Love Song Reverie

Perched upon the door step The walls caving in You offered me a cigarette, and silence

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No Return

The mind is willing but the body lets me down I’ve been here before, I’ve been here before.

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Phoenix

Here, Standing in the glow

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Lullaby (On A Dark Night)

For my mother, and for her mother (who we never knew)

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Dream Child

And now, it seems, it’s time for me, to dream you into existence. Always, it seems, you find a way to slip right through my…

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Cherry Tree

Underneath the cherry tree, Framed above in pink and blue, I dreamed away the last of springtime — Summer spreads her wings, coming all…

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Only Ashes

A Song Lyric

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Caught in the Tide

Playing in the shallows, castles in the sand; squealing delight, as each wave rolls to the shore.

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These Streets

Pull away from the crowd — memory always speaks too loud on these streets,

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The Tell-Tale Heart

My heart is broken. (The metaphor made real.) In syncopated time, it cries out loud.

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Natalie Stands

Natalie stands in the doorway on the corner, where the buses roar past in a stream. Tears pouring down, the crowds part around her, there…

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