Published in Overland Issue 213 Summer 2013 · Uncategorized Northgate Adam Formosa A cigarette bud sits at my windscreen creased left napping I can write your name in Arabic, I know its heavy smoke curls, its language if I carve the space you left with a cigarette I’d find baklava and garlic or eggplant on rye peeping fig-trees, weighted Davidoff Adventure lurking pastirma or bastirma sipping arak, pistachio rinds cooked in wooden mould, I’d find a gold cross hung around the sun anchored on its centre burning into its skin drop me to the bottom of your thoughts to where sandstone sings evaporates heat to its point bleached like bones from the sun, to our first language Adam Formosa Adam Formosa is a NSW South Coast-based poet, whose best work comes out while listening to Deadmau5. More by Adam Formosa › 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 25 September 202326 September 2023 · The university Solidarity but only among managers, or the future of the university sector Hannah Forsyth The process continued during Covid. Jobs were being cut due to the threats posed by the pandemic, yet more scholars were being recruited. Nice people, good at their job. But why are we doing this, we kept asking. Management kept telling us we have a funding crisis (which often turned to a surplus in the end), so why are we also on a hiring spree? All along it looked like it could end badly, for all of us. First published in Overland Issue 228 15 September 202326 September 2023 · Friday Features Activating the poetic spirit as friendship John Kinsella I’ve always had the aching feeling that—as a text to be shared among friends and maybe eventually ‘enemies’—the soul-body dialogue poem is a way of arguing towards spiritual certainty in the face of earthly corruption and doubt.