Published in Overland Issue 220 Spring 2015 · Uncategorized Invisible spears Ellen van Neerven A stadium can hold the most sound drowning out the bora ring mudding the lines we needed to know where we’re going now it’s a clusterfuck to get the train home flip up seats and overflowing beer the rude odour of tomato sauce and the black faces they never show on TV the team with the most blackfullas they don’t want to win the commentator’s curse the tiddling fear of invisible spears we can’t score goals on this sacred land celebrated as animals GI doing the goanna, yeah but not people with military intelligence you don’t want us protecting our land like the Maori – that means it was our land to protect we don’t need a haka of whitefullas just let us resist. Ellen van Neerven Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer, editor and educator of Mununjali Yugambeh and Dutch heritage with strong ancestral ties to south east Queensland. 'Chermy' appears in van Neerven's newly released second poetry collection Throat (UQP, 2020). More by Ellen van Neerven › 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.