soft tissue: a body of experimental non-fiction

This book was produced in partnership with RMIT’s undergraduate Creative Writing program

I feel both body and spirit stretch as if waking from lifelong slumber. Or maybe I’m feeling everything? I am a surgeon: my latex gloves plunge deep in the slippery tangle of flesh; my memory bank, splayed out on the operating table. I have felt the wiring of my brain get cut and quietly rearranged. Maybe tomorrow, post-swim, I’ll shampoo and condition some sense into this body of mine. Maybe I’ll consult my tarot cards. I am going to stop eating Cheezels for dinner. I don’t want any more chemicals in my body. Fair enough. More than fair enough. Someone is brushing my hair and I feel excited. skin crawling. chest collapsing outwards. not painful. Is it wrong that I’m more into this than his hands gripping my thighs? bodies tightly woven. I could not bear to see eyes and to have eyes see me, the shape of my face. where they once settled lived breathed. I focus on my hands and everything surrounding it blurs as it fades away. I feel lucky for all I that I have. Tell yourself to remember. And tell yourself often.

In the fourth issue of the Bowen Street Press Review, nineteen writers from RMIT University’s Creative Writing program explore ways of knowing through experimental non-fiction.