Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015 · Uncategorized breakfast at the end of a financial year Joanne Burns bodies become corpses at the whim of a machine gun rising up from carthaginian waves no more suntans or lotophagi breakfasts by the sea houellebecq you warned us but who is so cognisant when a holiday is urgent like a first or last resort v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n wimbledon is second best squawks of cockatoo hijack talk of those treasonable tweets tennis brats make threats parents slurp back ego shakes as children morph to instant geniuses or genii on rapid break-the-fast tv coffee brews avocado smash and feta bites into the burnished toast the acropolis in the distance stoic and forlorn syntagma spreads like vertigo-a-go -go; here comes cautionary ritsos as he drags his bags of stones, scratching like the claws of tiny owls along the ground will those sydney lentil counters graduate to quinoa numerology dukka delphics million dollar bedsits or simply chocolate frogs just mind the gap between the trireme and the pier dock no ATMs ahoy fate curves like a recycled frisbee in search of destiny — Joanne Burns Joanne Burns is a Sydney poet. Her most recent book is brush (Giramondo Publishing 2014). She has been a teacher of English and creative writing and has been performing her work since the 1970s. More by Joanne Burns › 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 20 December 202420 December 2024 · Reviews Slippery totalities: appendices on oil and politics in Australia and beyond Scott Robinson Kurmelovs writes at this level of confusion and contradiction for an audience whose unspoken but vaguely progressive politics he takes for granted and yet whose assumed knowledge resembles that of an outraged teenager. There should be a young adult genre of political journalism to accommodate books like this. 19 December 202419 December 2024 · Reviews Reading JH Prynne aloud: Poems 2016-2024 John Kinsella Poems 2016-2024 is a massive, vibrant and immersive collation of JH Prynne’s small press publication across this period. Some would call it a late life creative flourish, a glorious coda, but I don’t see it this way. Rather, this is an accumulation of concerns across a lifetime that have both relied on earlier form work and newly "discovered" expressions of genre that require recasting, resaying, and varying.