Published in Overland Issue 224 Spring 2016 · Uncategorized Gods of my youth Caitlin Maling At night we leave the colony to go to the ballet: Balanchine, mixed repertoire, Tchaikovsky. It’s American Girl Night and the girls in pigtails and gingham carry dolls in pigtails and gingham, blondes with blondes, brunettes with brunettes. On stage the corps dances the garlands, such unison, such unison, while with poise and grace back in Perth my sister slowly bleeds out the last of what would’ve been a baby and at intermission I text her. On stage the man lifts the woman above his head the girls and the dolls gasp and sigh and I hear my country roar inside me. It’s important to have control. Caitlin Maling Caitlin Maling is a WA poet with five books published. More by Caitlin Maling › 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 11 June 2026 · Solidarity The zero-sum state: what the Royal Commission reveals on the future of Muslim life in Australia Sara Cheikh Husain The zero-sum logic that the Royal Commission’s witnesses have voiced through the IHRA definition is a colonial act of oppression. If the state succumbs to that logic, as every indication suggests it will, Muslim political solidarity with Palestine risks becoming not merely unrecognised but structurally criminalised. The full institutional protection of one community will come to be constitutively built on the misrecognition of another. 10 June 2026 · Rural Australia Left in place: how distance in Australia is political Emma Goldrick If we are to better understand inequality within Australia, we must begin with the recognition that disadvantage does not only reside in income brackets or postcodes associated with urban poverty. It is also embedded in the sheer physical scale of the nation and the political choices made about who gets connected to opportunity and who remains at the margins of it.
