Published in Overland Issue 209 Summer 2012 · Uncategorized Glazed Peyote Crème Brûlée Paul Chicharo The scavenged tin hovels and wet pits of desert dwelling skags seem deserted save for the encircling shadows of bulimic buzzards. And hanging from the sprigs of thistles are toothbrush plastic rosary beads pinched from a petrol station along with Quasimodo’s prickly pear pitchfork. Little Marci modelling truck stop sunnies, twirls in her white dress; Flower girl fanging it across the waste with Mumsy and militant surrealists. Sipping on ice cold cola daisies, with the clammy air conditioned hands of surrealists resting eyes; unaware of intimate wet pits chocked with constipated, mind-melted skags wearing muddied cotton nighties, mottled by silverfish unlike Marci’s dainty white dress. Mumsy and Quasimodo squabble over the flat, as Marci eyes lethargic buzzards looming over the setting sun; screeching, ‘cyanide dust bunny. Pitchfork! Pitchfork!’ The prune fingers of skeletons embellish their chinless chicken necks with rosary beads. Hail Mary our Father, hail Mary our Father. Pleated ribs toggle blind eel eyed rosary beads whilst condom vending machines re-rejects an inquisitive gold coin until curious surrealists receive ribbed for her pleasure, before ones pinned in the urinal by the prickly pear pitchfork. The other wheezes its last unflushed, out-of-order, gurgle to the wrinkled muzzles of skags. The cherry pop of iridescent delicacies wafts by scatters of famished buzzards while little Marci slumped on her crayoned napkins naps in her white dress. Under the chipped table, ancient bubblegum stalactites dangle above her white dress and Mumsy sips her dog shit coffee with a lukewarm cringe, oblivious to rosary beads rattling around the fluorescent winds like feathered war bonnets made from buzzards. Outside the lavender moloch’s nib laps up ethereal energy drinks from murdered surrealists, Quasimodo skillet-flips a cheese toastie; his makeshift spatula lost to sticky-fingered skags prowling, after fog-eyed Marci as she plods to the restroom. ‘Dust bunny, pitchfork!’ ‘Cyanide! Cyanide!’ The waning gibbous moon trips on the Devil’s pitchfork, its prongs still clinging to the bloodied, tattered, shreds of Marci’s white dress. Back at the hovels, the cracked jittery lips of lizard brained skags, spit stream thoughts and cannibalistic chants into thistled rosary beads, as they spork out the still eyes of little Marci; and the retching ghosts of surrealists puke out coal butterflies plus grotesque gummy centipedes for moth-winged buzzards ‘Sugarcane of green eye shine: welts of starlight vaporise Wargle’s nook!’ Gluts of buzzards gnaw at hostile ankles and splurge on sweet innards. ‘Pina Colada, pish-pish — Pitchfork!’ Glittering deep down the tunnels of Onkalo; Marci and melancholic surrealists dream of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Her dainty white dress incinerated with the waste; its soot buried under unsanctioned size eleven rosary beads belonging to the god-king tridents of mutant meth-head-junkie-rapists; not skags. Airborne surrealists slinking napalm ideals carpet bomb the blood speckled howls of skags hunting eternal youth in the eyes of young girls with pitchfork friendly rosary beads crying out to lost gods burnt by radiation. Buzzards devour souls mourned by the white dress. Paul Chicharo Paul Chicharo is a senior intelligence operative for Dulex who defected from MK Ultra in 2027. Often re-purposes old refrigerators as plots in his local community garden. More by Paul Chicharo › 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 5 November 20245 November 2024 · Reviews True dreams: Martin Edmond’s Conrad Dougal McNeill Witnessing, reading through this absorbing, elegant, careful example of the art, is always a kind of mourning, and Conrad, an author for whom writing was “the conversion of nervous force into phrases,” is the perfect figure to focus Edmond’s ongoing work of mourning. 4 November 20244 November 2024 · Palestine The incarceration of Indigenous and Palestinian children: a shared legacy of settler colonialism Sarah Abdo In Palestine, children are detained as a means of maintaining the occupation and suppressing resistance. In Australia, youth incarceration extends the legacy of forced removals and perpetuates intergenerational trauma among Indigenous communities. Children are targeted precisely because they represent the continuity and survival of their communities. This intentional disruption is not simply a matter of misguided policy but part of a broader effort to undermine Indigenous and Palestinian resilience.