Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018 · Uncategorized Storm damage Mitchell Welch the momento mori of a drowned world is untold inside out umbrellas, a plague of logo-spangled spider bones webbed with shreds of nylon gumming up a ruin-of-a-bridge’s pylon and if you thought old Moses was a miracle baby, just you wait and see— imagine the biblical intensity of a whole generation launched in eskies on the deluge of a great river of denial. anyway, there aren’t enough ex-prime ministers in the world to put on waders, balance all our baggage on their heads, and move us to higher ground— not in such ruddy conditions as these ( lol ) every fallen limb represents an incident report, an informational event that sets processes branching up towers like acute pain to the dead letter brain. the storm’s allusive rage in tatters resembles the way a modern day nightmare feels in the dark for an open hatch through which slurries of adult wisdom can be shit-shovelled back in time to re-landscape backyards of childhood dreams with scary monster memes. Image: Blue cascades / flickr Read the rest of Overland 231 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Mitchell Welch Mitchell Welch is a writer and communications advisor from Queensland who has worked and lived in Brisbane, Melbourne, Hobart and the Gold Coast. His first book, Vehicular Man, was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, and is available from Rabbit. More by Mitchell Welch › 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.
