Published in Overland Issue 216 Spring 2014 · Uncategorized Fading Pam Brown conjecture if I can’t come up with anything I’ll crawl over and tap out one note I’m trying hard to live a bourgeois life – taking double-strength cappuccinos tying coloured balloons to the fence Ladies & Gentlemen Please Stop at Security and put your mobile phone number on your child’s arm crepe paper streaked with cream darkness drops like a blind holy ghost keeps hanging on muffled steps relaxed like hands in pockets Block people moved to Housing Department flats clutching brown paper bagged bottles moping round on the bus route * fading beyond whatever you were a boatload of rats a-rowing down some slippery stream sitting on the carpet rug reading the long list of benefactors to the art magazine is anyone still ever born again? no phenomenon but in things like slim cyber tablets scissor sharpeners glass paperweights vinyl bucket seats brass padlocks a sundial you only get one jubilee and I’ve had mine no poem is meant for anyone literary magazine editor gets intoxicated we get drunk make an unintended poem a yahoo might like Pam Brown Pam Brown has published many chapbooks, pamphlets and full collections of poetry, most recently Stasis Shuffle (Hunter Publishers, 2021). She lives in a south Sydney suburb on reclaimed swampland on Gadigal Country. More by Pam Brown › 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 1 May 20261 May 2026 · Long read Dungeons & Dragons is a waste of time: an unproductive case for radical action Scott Hudson Another such casualty is the push of AI into the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Used in this way, AI purports to hack your recreational time, allowing you to maximise it by smoothing over the nitty gritty. But the thing is, the joy of D&D is the nitty gritty. AI promises to improve the productivity of work and leisure, but much of D&D thrives on being unproductive. 30 April 2026 · Housing Organised abandonment and Victoria’s Big Housing Build Oli Caruana-Brown and Ella McNicol The crisis is not due to a physical shortage of properties. Rather, it is a series of intentional decisions by Governments to prioritise a system of private property over peoples’ basic human need for shelter, allowing landlords and corporations to continue to hoard housing and extract wealth from tenants via rent.
