Published 29 January 20219 April 2021 · Friday Poetry / Main Posts Poetry | Canals Anders Villani and the salons remain open and your mother receives her prescription through an open car window and back doors open onto yards and low bone sky and casuals watch months open full-timers open redundancies portfolios find openings in steel and your mother lays her head in a basin of warm water in disbelief the flow doesn’t open across her face and open praise for the next face and salt opens eggplant hydrants and back doors open onto yards with corellas low bone figs and your father fills prescriptions teaches parents to open tablets to powder apple juice and your father’s mother tongue sings open balcony doors floods canals and the hair of the dead keeps growing the nails and the salons of the living keep open the living Anders Villani Anders Villani holds an MFA from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program, where he received the Delbanco Prize for poetry. His first book, Aril Wire, was released in 2018 by Five Islands Press. He lives in Melbourne. www.andersvillani.com More by Anders Villani › 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 23 October 202623 October 2026 · Friday Poetry The Deluge, 1920 Jocasta Suzanne ... it’s all dramatic: the world becoming shapes. A mound in the mid-distance, already sub- merged, those clutching the roof turning to barely blotches; 1 18 September 202618 September 2026 · Nakata Brophy Prize Announcing the final results of the 2026 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers Editorial team Sponsored by Trinity College at the University of Melbourne and supporters, the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, established in 2014, recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across […]
