Published in Overland Issue 205 Summer 2011 · Uncategorized Bite the Wax Tadpole DJ Huppatz History is the heavy. The Azure Dragon lives in a world woven by ration and romantics. It’s easiest to capture things that don’t move. Large bronze vats, for example. Weeds twist the blue-tiled roof out of proportion, lead petals drop chips on the golden paper sails. My little rose-cherry-rusty lotus bud looked counter-evolutionary in her velvet uniform and silver boots. Xinjiang restaurateurs, Henan recyclers, Anhui maids and Hebei builders, shepherded by an invisible hand, like a swarm of swallows or the melancholic object of her disappearing. In those days there was no electricity, the attendants carried lanterns of scarlet gaze. Now the city’s a radio and the Azure Dragon is broadcasting: “Bite the Wax Tadpole, The World’s Most Stimulating Bland.” DJ Huppatz D J Huppatz is a Melbourne-based writer who has had poetry published recently in VLAK 2 (2011) and Black Inc.’s The Best Australian Poems 2011. More by DJ Huppatz › 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 19 April 2024 · Friday Fiction Stilted J.E “Mahal” Cuya One hour after midnight. Everyone in rooms. Living room – dark. Table look like monsters. Like death. TV on stand. Netflix Logo. No one watching. Residents asleep. They have dementia. 18 April 202418 April 2024 · Education A Jellyfish government in NSW: public education’s privatisation-by-neglect Dan Hogan A private school that receives public money is not a private school: it is a fee-paying public school. The overfunding of private schools using public money is a symptom of a public service that has been rotted for a quarter of century by a political class with no vision beyond producing dubious, misleading statistics to deploy at the next election.
