Broken Sleep Books sent something gratis and it was Roisin Dunnett’s Animal, Vegetable (2021) containing odd and profound ‘I am no longer baby I want power’ (first of three short stories) split into “Part 1” and “Part 2” based on a meme ~ “I’m baby” ~ involving Gameboy Dream Land’s Kirby which “she” (un-named third-person throughout) identifies with so much it’s like witnessing God. Observing “a fashionable woman with buffalo style trainers on, no socks” (obscurely significant) coming home from dinner with friend, “she” sets the .jpeg as wallpaper and screensaver and feels acutely recognised as helpless adult in company of the “I’m baby” imago. Revelling in Kirby “doctrine”, “she” sleeps whenever she likes, gets drunk lots, melancholically scrolls “garish nail art, mac and cheese and Doritos” on her smart-phone, relies on the care of loving allies. There’s an involute agency to it however: “Kirby’s principal method of battle was the absorption of an enemy’s powers – Kirby would become engorged, like a puffa fish, by their acts of violence, only to vomit the violence, unchanged, back out at them again”. It is all so b a r e. Soon “she” glimpses a screenshot ~ “I’m no longer baby I want power” ~ on Twitter (not X) causing another algorithym-induced relevation; realising she’s been in “Power Saver Mode” after exhausting stints of activism, “she” is back. In “Part 2” there are temporal hops and Roisin Dunnett says lots in un peu expanse (similar themes to Anaïs Nin’s ‘The Mouse’, an apple consumed from a pocket, a new Kirby birthed). I asked Google Is roisin an Irish name and that scary AI Overview feature told me Yes, Róisin is an Irish girl’s name that means little rose. The Rose Garden (2024), Maeve Brennan’s short stories smashed together by Stinging Fly Press came out on Tuesday!
Part of Animal, Vegetable, brought to you à Broken Sleep Books 2021
A Personal Anthology 