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 First published in Overland Issue 228 8 December 2023 · Fiction Fiction | The Victims Emma Jayne Willson Every morning I checked the Director’s calendar to ensure there were no meeting clashes, no opportunity for her polished façade to slip. Once I’d made the mistake of booking two meetings without leaving ten minutes between them, thus forcing her to run across the sprawling campus. She arrived late for her meeting with the Provost, […] First published in Overland Issue 228 7 December 20238 December 2023 · Food Righteous appetites: the dilemmas of the ethical omnivore’s diet Jaimee Edwards The pastoral is our setting for the good life that puts the 'ethical' in 'ethical sausage'. The websites for small-scale farms and ethical meat butchers around the world look like brochures for retirement living. Together, the happy animals, their conscientious handlers, and ceremonial butchers form a picture of aligned values.
