Published in Overland Issue 206 Autumn 2012 · Uncategorized Sonar Toby Fitch From a drunken cruise on the harbour comes a bouncing melody: I wanna have sex on the beach. Anyone can see it on everyone’s mind As the summertime trees nod assent In the Botanic Gardens, Their scent wafting up the nostrils Of skyscrapers breathing in fumes, Pumping out bucks, Relaying UV to the ant-sized joggers Who bound up and down along the shoreline On sand grains jostling for legroom. Above them, birds, checking out the goods Of a small grey woman staring at the bridge, Thinking: I wanna walk across water Like sound, as her skin remembers a distant Prickling, another season, A sun and a wind that lifts her hairs. Toby Fitch Toby Fitch is Overland’s poetry editor, a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney, and the poet behind Rawshock, Bloomin’ Notions, Where Only the Sky had Hung Before and, most recently, Sydney Spleen. He is the editor of the poetry anthologies Best of Australian Poems 2021 (co-edited with Ellen van Neerven) and Groundswell: The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New & Emerging Poets 2007–2020. More by Toby Fitch › 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 November 2024 · Art Art and ethics in death: the case of Vivian Maier Maks Sipowicz In the internet age we have the means to make Vivan Maier's photographs and materials available to everyone, preserved and displayed, away from the necromantic urges of capital accumulation at the expense of a dead artist. 12 November 202414 November 2024 · open letter End scholasticide in Palestine: an open statement Stop Scholasticide AU We, the undersigned who represent the diverse education community across the continent of Australia, demand an end to the complicity of the Australian education sector’s leaders in the systematic destruction and attempted annihilation of the Palestinian education system.
