Published in Overland Issue 258 2025 · Uncategorized Craig fugue Alice Allan I was 20, rich, & lying on my Newstart so I could buy us petrol, maybe drinks at Das Kapital, where we once saw Kim Beazley, who’d just lost the election post-Tampa, post-9/11. I had this sweet office gig making photocopies, answering phones. Mum’s neighbour Craig ran the café across the road. He gave us freebies. My boss loved Craig & his coffees. Her daughter rang the office at least twice a day. Hanging up, my boss would say: “Don’t get married. Don’t have kids.” My Newstart got us a converted garage with a sloping bathroom & under-floor millipedes. We snuck in a kitten. Craig had two kids plus a wife on mat leave. He checked on Mum. Mum loved Craig & his two kids. Kim Beazley promised he’d make Les Murray poet laureate as soon as he was PM, but Labor dumped Kim the same week his brother died. Les died later. Craig moved out. Das Kapital is an açai place. Alice Allan Alice Allan produced the long- running podcast Poetry Says. Her debut collection, The Empty Show, was shortlisted for the Anne Elder Award. More by Alice Allan › 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 18 May 202618 May 2026 · Militarisation Sacrificed for the Pentagon: on Australia’s “security” crisis Gwenaël Velge The connection between the Jarrah Forest, the submarine base, and the data centres is not metaphorical. It is the three pillars of AUKUS, made material in a single city. Pillar III strips the forest to supply aluminium and gallium to the other two pillars, gutting environmental and water security. 15 May 2026 · Friday Fiction The structure Dominic Carew We made it to the park by eight. The winter sun was filtering through the far trees in a wan, lemon trickle, the thin clouds sheets of white. The cool sky a rubbed-at blue. The grass squelched beneath our feet and elsewhere, thinned from wear, the earth stretched grassless and muddy and, in some parts, released a thick mist.
