Intimacies, intricacies, cadences

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Learning the local language

Essay IT WAS IN a Melbourne museum that I realised I didn’t know the traditional name for the area in South Australia where I’d grown...

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Seized by a ceaseless meanwhile

Non-fictionOwing to its prominent location and spectacular collapse, Álvaro Obregón 286 featured prominently in media coverage of the earthquake rescue. But residents told me they always suspected something was afoot. Within twenty-four hours of the disaster, rescuers from Israel and Spain arrived onsite. Both teams quickly recovered documents and computers and rescued only specific people, while others in the rubble still cried out for help.

The Orcanauts

FictionAs admiral, my rank is Navarch. Below me serve three Plotarchs, or strike-team leaders. The rest, including the calves, are rank and file Orcanauts. Thus far, we have operated as a guerrilla force, mounting unexpected assaults on the enemy fleet, causing maximum disruption to their supply channels and leisure activities before fleeing for the safety of deep, open water. It has been a highly effective strategy, but too piecemeal. The drylanders have dispatched scientists to study our behaviour and offer explanations, rather than send divers and submarines to face us in battle. Their media have portrayed me as a rampaging fish, driven mad by some traumatic encounter with one of their boats.

Exemplary

Poetry The superego’s unvarying verdict: you have failed, you deserve it, get over it! Stay in your own psychotic micro-enclave, opining about enactment and re-enactment. Now and again there’s...