Published in Overland Issue 228 Spring 2017 · Uncategorized Trial Elena Gomez silk nest hull crisp plaits a deck cuffs in flanks The magistrate speaks with circle-shaped lips. The witch remains silent but licking her palm and smoothing the left parting on her hair. The first witness: we could smell the lavender and soon the pigs emerged from the barn and could not look around them. the animals were running very fast in many directions. The witch refuses her name of earthly possession. Magistrate: why do you continue to baste yourself? Murmurs from the crowd: the promise of rejuvenation. Witch: my speech is not ready for you. Read the rest of Overland 228 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Elena Gomez Elena Gomez is the author of Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt (Puncher & Wattmann) and Body of Work (Cordite). She lives on unceded Wurundjeri country. More by Elena Gomez › 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 17 April 2026 · Friday Fiction These old hands, they are still growing Sam Fisher It was an old house meshed in an unrelenting grid of brick and weatherboard. Its walls still stood stark, red brick. Paint like tender old sagging skin on the timber windows. A bastard of a garden surrounded it, ran up brick wall and concrete path. The lawn, dead that time of year, luminescent in the streetlight. In the center of that void, a sign, Auction. 15 April 202615 April 2026 · Climate politics The $67 billion climate betrayal: how Australia’s record fossil fuel subsidies fund global destruction Noa Wynn The contradictions aren't failures of implementation. They're the predictable result of a political system that has decided fossil fuel profits matter more than climate stability, more than the Great Barrier Reef, more than Pacific Islander lives, and more than the future habitability of the planet.
