Published in Overland Issue 207 Winter 2012 · Uncategorized To Nina Pam Brown once upon a time 19 hundred 68 is over is thin politics dashed, disconnected, diachronicity indicating technology’s noisy cataclysm & flashing strobe boxed in a dusty garage 19 hundred 98 is over is how to scratch the future when it’s gone, thinking pastness is up ahead 20 oh 8 is over is atmospheric brooding, interpretation rules the day, the weeks, years, the centuries sliding in to hide beneath the warmth of flock and shoddy, ruffling dust in the circuitry 20 ten is nothing else – laser beam a pilot’s eyes, upstage an apocalypse, my ten cent technophile you’re in my echo chamber, my feedback loop 20 twelve is corporately social, filtered, nothing deviant here, hop away now, recharge, unencumbered & unapologetic Nina – an entry in a ledger, all’s big data Pam Brown Pam Brown has published many chapbooks, pamphlets and full collections of poetry, most recently Stasis Shuffle (Hunter Publishers, 2021). She lives in a south Sydney suburb on reclaimed swampland on Gadigal Country. More by Pam Brown › 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.