Published in Overland Issue 214 Autumn 2014 · Writing Lagrange Andrew Watts We could go, then, to the largest shopping outlet of this lifetime, where among the stops is the car park concrete roof we will aim the car onto, much like Lumiere’s forehead or Athena’s birth in breech. There before the door release in breathe-less front- facing, we both without thought look across the rebar barricade where – without once bothering to change – the blithe limit of the suburb gathers with the sky out of earshot on the breadth of the further blurred lowermost line of the eye chart, lying over Wanwood. This is the never eventful ever unenviable devourment of the world while no-one observes: line of vision drops seatbelt unclasps head raises solid beam cuts horizon collapses returns in the instant: and we lock exit the vehicle, huffle each sole over the fore- court. And the sight if ever unnoticed is there still: all trees have fallen without need of us; we depart and it would remain, the glimpse-and-glimpse baking haloed picture of buildings growing smaller, furthermost lines thunderously violet and unreadable. The waterless planet we cheaply visit: the upturned upper jaw of lampmasts each untuned to a.m. to deter gathering. The entrance, strictly a noun, recedes. Scopes away-out like Vertigo. The frontage, facade-as-facade through to the carbon, is adamantly carbon. This is the interval where garlanded guinea pigs waddle between low grass walls. Only there are no guinea pigs and the air here is heavy. Andrew Watts Andrew Watts has studied English and creative writing. He works from home as a copyeditor in suburban Canberra. More by Andrew Watts › 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 11 December 202411 December 2024 · Writing The trouble Ken Bolton’s poems make for me, specifically, at the moment Linda Marie Walker These poems doom me to my chair and table and computer. I knew it was all downhill from here, at this age, but it’s been confirmed. My mind remains town-size, hemmed in by pine plantations and kanite walls and flat swampy land and hills called “mountains”. 17 July 202417 July 2024 · Writing “What is it that remains of us now”: witnessing the war on Palestine with Suheir Hammad Dashiell Moore The flame of her poetry scorches the states of exceptions that allow individual and state-sponsored violence to continue, unjustified, and unhistoricised. As we engage with her work, we are reminded that "chronic survival" is not merely an act of enduring but a profound declaration of existence.
