Helena Pantsis

An experiment in Microsoft Word, ‘AT THE END THE WORLD REALLY
ENDS’ utilises only shapes and text to extend poetry to a visual feat. Examining a series of topics,
the isolation of the format is intended to highlight the intersectionality of identity, mental illness,
and class division amongst others, culminating in a thread of works that exist both separately and as
a cohesive view of the previous few years of the author’s life. Works can be viewed in any order
and can also be read in various ways.

Image ID: Against a stark white background text reads: at the end, the world really ends. Overlapping some of the text are amorphous blobs obscuring the writing.

Image ID: In amongst a swarm of the word ‘instincts’, text reads: I, and I alone, an island isolated by the instincts I refuse to indulge in. Written in separate boxes beneath this, text reads: I am a child left along in the kitchen with a knife cut from my shoulder to my thigh.

Image ID: Connected by various dashed lines strung like lights over circular geometric shapes, text reads: overripened fruit hangs heavy on the vine, gripping onto dear life by the teeth of bending stems.

Image ID: On a pitch black background, FUCK! is written in large, arched letters. Text reads: fuck the officers of the unlawed the outlaws waterboarded into submission / hellbound and edged to unmanned cliffs where the wind blows violently and the currents have teeth. The final two words repeatedly appear, overlapping themselves and growing larger as if an echo.

Image ID: A half-finished brick wall emerges from the right of the page. Spiralling into one of the bricks, text reads: Money tastes like ammonia and bleach poured down a drainpipe of fail-safes and dreams.

Image ID: The letter O followed by an exclamation point sit large in the centre of the page, surrounded by and appearing to weigh down the following text: I am thick-skulled and fish-eyed / my mother holds my head up in fear that it might snap.

Image ID: Lines overlap each other, angled and forcing text to follow a path vertically down the centre of the page. The text reads: accrue debt and die.

Image ID: A series of rectangles appear to fall like dominoes as pushed by the following text: landlord lets me out once a month to cash my cheque.

Image ID: A small dark circle with text inside sits adjacent to a larger circle full of straight lines and surrounded by further circling text. The text reads: my lungs balloon / I catch the air and feed it for another thirty days.

Image ID: A building takes up the majority of the page, created solely with lines and cast in shadow from its side and on the ground. Text lines the front, reading: cancel culture is a two week vacation / a walk in the forest and a million dollar home / the waters in L.A. heal wounds / turn back time / redemption lies in the cradle of our fading memory.

Image ID: A large blackened B resembling the silhouette of a pregnant woman’s body marks the left side of the page, with a series of black dots lining the right of the page. The letters ‘aby’ appear multiple times in the woman in order to read baby over and over again.

Image ID: The following text appears upside down in the bottom right corner of the page: pregnant woman fallen down / let her lay upon the ground / concrete pillow, let her rest / baby perched on bloodied chest.

Image ID: A circular logo with a sun in the centre contains the following text, repeated and circling the logo’s edge: love in the age of social distancing.

Image ID: A Newton’s cradle is formed with dots and lines in the page’s centre. beneath the image, text reads: upturned handle, the cradle of my gut / opened arm—string meat, skimped rat pulled through thin-gapped teeth / fur on tongue, hair in throat, foot in mouth / mammoth heart.

Image ID: Dotted lines emerge like waves, with gaps between each wave and down the page’s middle. The text inside these gaps reads: lobsters left too long in the tank begin to ear themselves / if I am left outside too long my flesh begins to rot.

Image ID: The word ‘sacrifice’ is written on the page in large text, positioned so the writing appears to become smaller as it fades into the distance. The entire text is positioned in opposing perspectives to each other. It reads: curses of the third degree, / mercury’s lover / my land becomes the sun / a star buried in bodies. / We pay the policeman while the families of firemen / sacrifice.

Image ID: The following text is underlined and positioned at odds with each other to make the image of a lopsided window: window-sill-grave-yard.

Image ID: In large quotation marks, text reads: everything is fine. In an attached speech bubble with a dashed outline, text reads: so they say so they say.

Image ID: Half a spiral of text becomes smaller as it reaches its centre. The text reads: I think it’s called brotherly love when the hair strand tassels begin to split from my scalp because I know so well how to wash a dish my burnt hands are rubber gloves and it must be brotherly love.

Image ID: A grand, messily illustrated stamped with the words ‘fortune&fate’ branded in the corner contained the following text: A bag of chicken bones that rattle in the wind / hear the clack clack clack of femur on ulna, of tooth on tooth in a hemp drawstring bag, it hangs on the porch, skeleton windchime and calcified ashes and speaks the future in taps and ticks, bell of the wind and body in the oven. / I’ll eat myself alive and use the bones to fulfil this self-fulfilling prophecy.

Image ID: A chair with a long, dark shadow cast from it sits below a series of quotation marks turned at different angles. Down the right of the page text reads: dairy farmers sitting on stained chairs staring at the weather channel.

Image ID: A great, dark speech bubble emerges from the bottom of the page. The text inside it reads: I rose into love with you.

Image ID: Text is stretched and distorted, running out from a maze on the page’s bottom left corner. It reads: anxiety is the foundation of all living things / the motivator / you are sorely mistaken to believe in strength and want and fortune / when all there is, is fear.

Image ID: Dandelion fluff floats from one corner to another, followed by a dashed line to indicate movement. Text floating around it reads: thumb shut eyes / we reap new stock from the earth.

Image ID: An umbrella blocks the path of rain so that all of the page bar the space beneath it is full of rain. Text positioned underneath the umbrella reads: vigilante justice where I am the one wearing gasoline.

Image ID: The skeleton of a fish lies next to the following text: knowing I will outlive you, I leave the porchlight on.

Helena Pantsis (she/they) is a writer from Naarm, Australia. A full-time student of creative writing, they have a fond appreciation for the gritty, the dark, and the experimental. Her works are published in Overland, Island Online, Going Down Swinging, and Meanjin. More can be found at hlnpnts.com