29 July 20226 September 2022 Poetry / Friday Poetry / Friday Features Poetry | Yaaas Sophia Walsh Sara and I attend the opening night for the NGV’s QUEER exhibition. We were not invited and we did not buy tickets – in fact we did not even know it was on until stumbling upon it after watching the new Batman movie at the HOYTS in Melbourne Central and deciding to walk home south along the Yarra. We stop on Princes Bridge to admire Naarm after the day’s rain and take in the view of fuck knows what – we wish we were in New York. At the exhibition there are bubbles everywhere. We make out by the fountain watch a drag performance and notice a throuple of TikTok gays canoodling in a corner under the archway by the wet wall. Some people have so much chest hair. Khanh from MasterChef is having his photo taken in front of the sponsor’s wall – being gay made possible by the City of Melbourne and American Express. Yaaas. The red carpet is pink – we long to wrap ourselves up in it and roll gaily all the way home to Frankston South. Overland’s Friday Features project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. Sophia Walsh Sophia Walsh is a poet living in Naarm. Some of her work has appeared in Westerly, Cordite Poetry Review, No More Poetry’s No No No Mag, and elsewhere. More by Sophia Walsh 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 3 March 20233 March 2023 Poetry Poetry | 2 rat poems by joanne burns joanne burns the courtyard rat squatting on an empire of pizza boxes rainsoaked piles of stewing cardboard flattened packaging from long covid's eager merchandise anything to transcend an unimagined plague rat traps line the walls like doctors' obsolete portmanteaux from a much earlier decade First published in Overland Issue 228 10 February 202322 February 2023 Poetry Poetry | Inflorescence Jo Langdon History or myth—picture tulip bulbs, unburied like onions. An onion is the likeness Hepburn—in Gardens of the world—proffers in the purr & lilt of vowel, halt of consonant; annunciation that lifts ready from memory