Published in Overland Issue 252 Spring 2023 · Poetry Notes on flesh Joel Keith The bowl of citrus-scented Sicilian olives you ate one by one sucking the pips of until what you tasted was your own blood only demonstrates more clearly all one eats already soon will be oneself. FELL'S OFFICIAL GUIDE TO Knots AND HOW TO TIE THEM reads the title of one book in the free book bin whose introduction lists in painstaking detail all the ways one might die from in- sufficient knot-tying expertise — a cause of death which is, it says, impossible to extensively survey but must be comparable in frequency to drowning — addressing, in its morbid, practical way, the eternal concerns of poetry: namely, threading line through eye, how and to what may we fasten these, our fragile hour- bitten bodies, to hold them? Joel Keith Joel Keith is a writer and musician living on unceded Wurundjeri land. Her work has appeared in Island, Cordite, The Suburban Review, Overland, and elsewhere. They are the editor of Voiceworks. More by Joel Keith › 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 5 November 2025 · Poetry Force posture agreement Miroslav Sandev The men of Darwin have all taken their rottweilers / out for a walk at the same time. / For our protection. Like Pine Gap: / all those big white eyes that scan / the darkening horizon. / The eyes stay woke, so that we may sleep. / Or so they say. 1 22 August 202522 August 2025 · Poetry starmight K.A Ren Wyld Ending genocide and apartheid is the story. Palestinian liberation is the story. / Aboriginal rights is the story. Truth, justice, treaties and land back is the story. / Global Indigenous peoples’ solidarity and joy is the story. Kinship is the story.
