Published 21 August 202022 September 2020 · Poetry Poetry | The ordinary poem Ursula Robinson-Shaw there is a place more real than desire as real as a train or a brick or a sarcoma, words are cleaner there, swaying whitely like feathers in warm air, where dignity whispers like silk skirts. in the place, every thing is a thing in comparison: all bodies are dancers, all objects are symbols, all symbols are monuments in the place, poems are money, money is credit, credit is debt, debts are futures, futures are the everyday. all items are accounted for. and this puts the prophets out of business… more real than desire is a train, the view from the glass streaked cheaply with shapes — overgrowth, flickers of bare life, smoke screens, blackened scaffolds stark as nudity, satellites in the eaves, leaden feet shuffling — through the glass, all monuments are symbols all bodies are a right hand on a train, cold as a cistern, i write a list of demands: i demand a new textual violence, the restoration of the slap and the blow with the fist, a recession of dailiness, a cultural shift, the resensitisation of horror, i demand vitriols, gentle words falling away like stewed meat until a slump in loveliness becomes a long, low hum, i demand futures become threats, right hands become fists, i demand the bright morning arrive, sparkling and odious, i demand the names of every motherfucker who looked at the heaving earth and saw an outcome, a teacup or a clean line, the decorous rhythms of greenhouse plants, every motherfucker who said there is a place more real than desire, this is a debt-soaked world, the universe lawfully unfolds, on this side cast depravity as labour, cast the decadent as worker, consider the grindstone in its manifest beauties, the drones in the ceiling, their celestial tones, find bells, the sun, angels, all worn to nubs, wrest them from the dross with peace and honour, birdsong, winter tomatoes tart and bitter, the happiness of bread, barbarity knitting a sweater, no — i demand all bells become feral, i demand the sun and gnashing angels, i demand knives and needles, elegance laid down on the rails, visions, i demand all vulgar words become flesh, fuck the state, fuck debt, cops, collectors, enforcers, collaborators, bon mots, fuck the novel fuck it all until the air is thick with demands and in the dark recall the guillotine is not a symbol, not a monument it is as real as a train as a brick as a sarcoma, real as your right hand Ursula Robinson-Shaw Ursula Robinson-Shaw is a writer from Aotearoa, living in Narrm/Melbourne. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and co-director of sick leave, a reading series and journal. Her chapbook Noonday was published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2019. More by Ursula Robinson-Shaw › 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 8 March 20248 March 2024 · Poetry POETRY Gareth Morgan as if a poem were a person, me, i get up in the morning / i buy coffee in a can, and wait / you have to keep calm, “don't get upset” / or it fucks everything up. the bosses who tell me this / are wise but stupid troopers. this is a political poem 16 February 202419 February 2024 · Poetry Two poems from 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem Nam Le But think about the children, super cute children, mute children, with uncommonly big eyes, children with hard eyes, eyes that have seen what no child’s eyes should see, children naked as the day wearing big smiles and no smiles, preternaturally wise, with mooned-out tummies and cleft palates and cataracts, deformities and birth defects ...