Accessibility Tools
Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.
Subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, Google, or Spotify, or search for ‘The ABR Podcast’ on your favourite podcast app.
This week on The ABR Podcast, Neil Thomas reviews On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world by Kevin Rudd. Thomas explains that even China watchers find it hard to be clear on the thoughts and plans of the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. They disagree, he tells us, on basic, critical questions, such as for how long Xi will rule. ‘Enter Kevin Rudd’, Thomas writes. ‘In his latest book, former prime minister Kevin Rudd adds a worthy new chapter to his life of public service, digesting thousands of pages of “Xi Jinping Thought” so that you do not have to’. Neil Thomas is a Fellow on Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in Washington DC. Here is Neil Thomas with 'The red thread: Xi Jinping's ideology of power' by Neil Thomas, published in the December issue of ABR.
I am hearing voices –
banging pots, something
living in my skin, trucks
picking up what’s left of the week.
A man appears at the front fence, wants
to know if the cattle dog is friendly.
‘I’m not sure but you’re welcome to enter.’
The man asks if he will be safe
on the other side of the bolted gate
looks first at our dog’s b ...
O Hail! to the days of wine and typhus,
the arrangements of battlefields in early spring,
the glory of a factory that rifts your body
before it wipes your mind, religions vivid
as blood sacrifice. Rise up King Pepe!
Pwn the noob descending the staircase,
these Chads will know the beta’s far cry.
PTSD was straightforward
when you could just belt your ...
What happens after the rain is pure speculation
And this is a weekend where I exhale my body weight
In cigarette smoke and a hangover’s regrets
And The Boss’ call and response calibrates
And my city blossoms like an orchid or a cancer
Spreading over an investor’s heritage listing
And this is what it’s like when the evening three step
Picks up a fourth ...
The marker: Bruce Lee happy snapping
Opposite Trajan’s stables.
Not up to scratch, we replace
Dostoyevsky with an app
And clap enthusiastically
At the dud soundtrack’s tub.
When the Premier dished out
Shit sandwiches in the Executive
She called them pineapples.
They swapped ironic gifts
Post-catastrophe.
Now: giant, projected,
T ...
a gunman is a gunman is a gunman
like the chorus line tryout i felt nothing
it was worth noting the small matter
of gathering rare ingredients for a drink
a monday morning death toll
as specific as thursday’s Powerball
this time he can’t be arsed with the filter
it doesn’t come up at the crumbs
of somebody from the health team’s birthd ...
my name is abundance his name is love
charlie doesn’t advise does charlie
command? accrete necessary details
you can parse anything try
what’s a poor girl to do? parade us
as students we are your daughters
we lived as armies liberate villages
we all knew money wasn’t pure
my name is disturbance his name is love
you have an awful lot of gu ...
after the Saint Louis University Mental Status (SLUMS) Examination
at midpoint I take a call from work – don’t want to, though
all jobs are made up anyway and I’m not in today
the first year without ...
we started in 1981 and compleTed in 1988.
in 1983 the first portioN
of it was included in john cagE's book x ...
gurgle /ˈɡəːɡ(ə)l
grandmothers carry prams to term / babysit baby’s baby / regurgitated capsule
commuters exhale daily day into night aircon carriage ...
Expressing
to the world
a raw idea
how to be watched
but also