Published in Overland Issue 215 Winter 2014 · Uncategorized Desire Luke Best After Song of Solomon Desire consumes me in this, a dream: I’m flat on my back ’neath the tower of David. Spring is pregnant to Winter. The sky is a bladder, stretched and sewn at its edge. I search for clouds though there is nothing in my pockets or up my nose. Before me you take form; cloud-like. Unlike Cirrus, you are not a puny wisp, nor like Stratus; pubescent tufts of fluff. You are Cumulonimbus; a great risen plume over Mt Zion. My son is in your womb. He has not yet learnt the contours of this planetary mess nor felt the rage that is necessary to drown it. We’ll see that he does – You lower yourself to me. Your gown slips from your back like the tent curtains of Solomon. Your hair is a hessian veil. Your lips drip with myrrh. Your waters break. Luke Best Luke Best is a poet from Toowoomba, Queensland. More by Luke Best › 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 22 November 202422 November 2024 · Fiction A map of underneath Madeleine Rebbechi They had been tangled together like kelp from the age of fourteen: sunburned, electric Meg and her sidekick Ruth the dreamer, up to all manner of sinister things. So said their parents; so their teachers reported when the two girls were found down at the estuary during a school excursion, whispering to something scaly wriggling in the reeds. 21 November 202421 November 2024 · Fiction Whack-a-mole Sheila Ngọc Phạm We sit in silence a few more moments as there is no need to talk further; it is the right place to end. There is more I want to know but we had revisited enough of the horror for one day. As I stood up to thank Bác Dzũng for sharing his story, I wished I could tell him how I finally understood that Father’s prophecy would never be fulfilled.