Published in Overland Issue Print Issue 198 Autumn 2010 · Writing / Main Posts Disquisition on Home Ryan Scott A fly kindly punctuates the table cloth before moving to remedy the syntax of a wall, a banana, a door knob … my lip. And the sun is more presence than detail. Unlike, say, the dark which remains a tease and knows its place. Light here invades lines. Colour has no room. My hands confuse themselves with the sand but not the trees; too dry to weep, they can only wait. A magpie gargles the air. That bird is the one fear from childhood I keep for comfort. Still, it’s more intelligent than most creatures. Pollsters should ask for its opinion, while grammarians should study where that fly lands, see if it finds words for its pedantic self. You and I would argue over the significance of each position. Sorry, you’d say, ‘You and I’. Maybe, we should take this inside. Ryan Scott Ryan Scott lives in the Czech Republic. His poems have appeared in a number of journals and websites in Australia and overseas. More by Ryan Scott › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 28 March 202428 March 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. First published in Overland Issue 228 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.