Published in Overland Issue · 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 10 February 202510 February 2025 · open letter Open letter on academic freedom, in solidarity with Randa Abdel-Fattah Scholars against political repression We, the undersigned, write to express our condemnation of the decision by the Education Minister Jason Clare to request the Australian Research Council (ARC) to investigate the Future Fellowship of Macquarie University academic Randa Abdel-Fattah “as a matter of priority”. 7 February 20257 February 2025 · Friday Fiction The gap between the trees Jenny Sinclair At first it was because I was angry. It might have looked like I was running away but I wasn’t. I was punching the earth with my feet. The faster I went — the harder my soles hit the ground — the better it felt. Because punching people is, you know, illegal. And wrong. But mostly illegal.