Published in Overland Issue 204 Spring 2011 Main Posts At Heatherlie Quarry Ann Vickery by the track, everlastings in bloom; paper-fine heads that vandals cut for vased reverie. no heather here, only wildflowers white, yellow, pinks. everywhere. today there is no stonemason only stonemusing, all in a day’s labour. I find myself gariwording a kind of “I woz ’ere 2011” graffiti as old-fashioned texting marking one’s own parking the national poetics in sleight colonial fashion. what other histories striate here everlongingly? land removal & razed ken notwithstanding. how to read dys-scriptively, query the quarry as industrial site or tourist point, the perfunctory consume & abuse of sublimity ungirded. this poem as Babel enfant reconstructs a monument, stories the stone once transported to Melbourne to support State Library sophistries. surplus slabs left scarred & abandoned. forms of the past handed on treasured extract (speaks volumes). around stark mining huts, three children hide & seek, a different game (foxes now baited here) (try to) pull the chain of the old trolley rusted on broken lines. futuring hands find only toy forms & will not remember this day. except for three take-home everlastings: forever keepsakes? Ann Vickery is the author of Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing and Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry. She is contributing editor of the online journal, Jacket2, and a past editor-in-chief of the online journal, HOW2. © Ann Vickery Overland 204-spring 2011, p. 114 Like this piece? Subscribe! Ann Vickery Anny Vickery teaches at Deakin University. She is the author of Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing and Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry. She is also co-author of The Intimate Archive: Journeys through Private Papers and co-editor of Manifesting Australian Literary Feminisms: Nexus and Faultlines. She has published poetry in a range of national and international journals. More by Ann Vickery 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 11 November 202211 November 2022 Main Posts On the last day of Subscriberthon, our amazing online editor gives you one last (very good) reason to subscribe Editorial team What's in store for the last day of Subscriberthon? First published in Overland Issue 228 10 November 202210 November 2022 Main Posts On the second-last day of Subscriberthon, our favourite editor-duo give you reason #1002 to subscribe to Overland Editorial team What's in store for the second-last day of Subscriberthon?