Published in Overland Issue 247 Winter 2022 Poetry Poetry | Hide and seek Sophia Walsh Sitting on a bench in Central Park, it’s a Friday afternoon in spring and I’m thinking thoughts in waves, like: just because she’s masc doesn’t mean she’ll top you and perhaps I’d be happier if I was eating a canelé. I come up with an idea for a poem about putting love (money) into things that love you back (not the bank), and I consider writing an essay about why drinking Coke every day gives you clear skin, or how nothing says I’m a lesbian like having a boyfriend, ordering a soy magic, or identifying as a gay man. The late day sun shines through the grove of American elms, komorebi, right onto me, and I recall seeing Eileen Myles earlier today in passing, power-walking along Saint Marks Place. I wonder how long it will take me to get to Kenka after this. Then I think about Chichi and how much I miss her: our Naarm Miscellania-rooftop romance, kissing a masseuse in jeans and kitten heels, dressing fancy in a Megsuperstarprincess kind of way. That night she told me that partying almost always makes sex redundant, and that moving to NYC to make it is over and instead, it’s all about moving to North Melbourne. Life is a single loop looping around. Amphetamines are everywhere. I wish Chichi was here with me. No I don’t. I wish I was a philosophy girl. No I don’t. I wish I was an art girl. No I don’t. Across the grove a baby starts crying. Freud says happiness is the maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation of pain. I want a smack and I want to smoke a Vogue. Sophia Walsh Sophia Walsh is a poet living in Naarm. Some of her work has appeared in Westerly, Cordite Poetry Review, No More Poetry’s No No No Mag, and elsewhere. More by Sophia Walsh 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 3 March 20233 March 2023 Poetry Poetry | 2 rat poems by joanne burns joanne burns the courtyard rat squatting on an empire of pizza boxes rainsoaked piles of stewing cardboard flattened packaging from long covid's eager merchandise anything to transcend an unimagined plague rat traps line the walls like doctors' obsolete portmanteaux from a much earlier decade First published in Overland Issue 228 10 February 202322 February 2023 Poetry Poetry | Inflorescence Jo Langdon History or myth—picture tulip bulbs, unburied like onions. An onion is the likeness Hepburn—in Gardens of the world—proffers in the purr & lilt of vowel, halt of consonant; annunciation that lifts ready from memory