Sonar


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 RawshockBloomin’ NotionsWhere 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 ›

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