
Immersed by Everett Vander Horst
Short Fiction: “Church is, I’m sorry to say, a mixed blessing.”
Short Fiction: “Church is, I’m sorry to say, a mixed blessing.”
Short Fiction: “They used the same picture of Meggie in all the newspapers, back in 1997 when she first went missing.”
Short Fiction: “The funny thing about the night I bump into her is that I’ve got some cracking power ballads going on in my head.”
Short Fiction: “He can’t get back to sleep once he’s awake. Besides, there are things to do.”
Short Fiction: “…I realise I’d completely forgotten you, for all these years.”
Short Fiction: “She wanted to eavesdrop, to join in, to ask them if they’d seen the crocodile everyone was talking about, but knew no French…”
Short Fiction: “Olive felt like a robot penguin that had been embedded in the huddle by the team from Frozen Planet to record their goings on.”
Short Fiction: “If you ever come looking for me, you’ll find me sitting in my car at the Kisementi car park, listening to Radio One.”
Short Fiction: “The tavern is only half full tonight, a crowd of beardless students daring each other to one more ale…”
Poetry: “unsure about her arrangement: I have /
never seen him in a suit in bed. Thinner, /
longer, he looks so serious with his halo…”
Poetry: “His shirt side-pulled, her rosy palm creams
whipped egg-white and eggplant flesh…”
Poetry: “In the basement we found his tools for separating Siamese Twins…”
Poetry: “She studied the braille / of his back in the / grey before morning…”
Poetry: “My people are people who still smoke cigarettes in bed…”
Poetry: “i love to see you. i want to see you. Sorry, i don’t watch 18 movies. i don’t want that kind of imagery going into my consciousness. ”
Poetry: “nothing is where it’s at / hurry-up i said to the delivery guy / who said urry-up nuffin / & it’s been mine ever since”
Poetry: “in the dream i swallow the bedclothes, drawing them into me like a reverse spirit medium…”
Poetry: You have a rash on your back. /
I think I’m supposed to tell you, / but while you’re asleep I take a picture of your skin
Poetry: Andy scoots past Woolworths and The Amhurst/ dazzles grey building blocks / roller skates tops / of brown brick walls…
Creative NonFiction: ‘Living with Dad was a bit like being loaded into a comedy cannon and then fired off to land somewhere, who knows where: in hospital, India, or the wrong school. He had this thing about experience, the necessity to experience life, cram as much as possible into it, and ‘develop the ever-expanding mind,’ as he put it.’
Creative NonFiction: ‘My father and I were both doctors. I use the past tense for my father, Harry Walker, because he died young. For myself, it is because I am no longer a real doctor. I became an epidemiologist and my clinical skills gradually atrophied.’
Creative NonFiction: ‘Violence gives some men wings, others the bullying power of the privately educated; some it reduces. For me, it is a source of relentless confusion.’
Creative NonFiction: ‘I feel dazed and dopey, my mind a blur of ideas and images’, writes Julia Bell. This state, and its discontents, will be familiar to many readers. With the relentless acceleration of online life over the last decade arising from the ubiquity of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, anxieties of a ‘crisis of attention’ have become commonplace.
Creative NonFiction: Half way through a story about a child and their canine best friend, I pause to think, “this isn’t going to end well.” There is a peculiar ache to worrying about the fate of a fictional pet, a kind of inevitability that doesn’t quite translate to watching human suffering.
Creative NonFiction: August, 2020. There’s a funfair on the Common. It is only a small one: a few socially distanced rides huddling well away from one another. But it is definitely there. Its placement has a defensive quality, tucked away at the bottom of the hill down by the High Road, surrounded by a temporary fence.
Creative NonFiction: Celebration Avenue. Victory Parade. Anthems Way. Olympic Village. Olympic sized shopping centre. Olympic Park. Olympic Javelin throwing you into London in record time. Shaving minutes off your journey. Increasing capacity on the network. Room for more. Squeeze in. Hold on tight.
Creative NonFiction: I’m desperate for money, and here is an opportunity. I take a photo of the email address with my phone while a man walks behind me.