Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018 · Uncategorized Surfrider Justin Wolfers A line of eleven custom-plated BMWs followed by a Prius. A Four Pillars gin and tonic w/ cucumber followed by a macchiato A complimentary strawberry truffle There are dolphins on the bedspread, mounted on the walls, decalled on the bathroom mirror I take a walk along the golf course and find myself complicit with the sprinklers It starts raining pronouns I read Lispector’s Hour of the Star under the awning of the surf club. She says that soon it will be the season for strawberries! Yeah, but it’s always the season for strawberries in the global frozen fresh food economy I cross the road to check out the cemetery, but it lacks gravitas. I eat sunshine for breakfast followed by a hash brown Then I meet up w/ Dess and we walk along the shoreline arguing post-capitalist aesthetics I use my go-to metaphor of a table. Sure yours might be flatpacked but mine was handmade by a friend Jasper, whose architecture thesis is on the ground, is on trees instead of timber As he told me this, the ball he was kicking came on quickly bursting off the surface Dess and I reach the point and marvel at the rock shelf. It’s created a natural weir that makes me wish I’d brought my camera We look out around the bend, and from this distance, the coastline is eroding beautifully Image: crop of Hour of the Star cover Read the rest of Overland 231 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Justin Wolfers Justin Wolfers is a Sydney-based writer, editor and researcher. He has published work in The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, Fireflies, Cordite, Seizure and Plumwood Mountain. He is a PhD candidate in contemporary fiction and poetics at Western Sydney University. More by Justin Wolfers › 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.