Published in Overland Issue 214 Autumn 2014 · Writing Stanwell Tops Mitchell Welch We shake off the engine echo, dopplering Over cliffs and shoals of glossy cloud Where fly-suited radicals uplift From wild Kombis to the hydrosphere Slung in air as thick as Liquid Nails Leaching out of seams of distant ice The yellow light a horizontal knife Blunted on an algal bloom, the reef weed Rolled up like a finger of tobacco In a backed-up gutter, we stop to watch Mazarine blues wash the windscreen Down in rimy penstrokes, hieroglyphic Screams or dreamy helices – The end Is near, the end! – descend the mauve Ecliptic. One comes thru the skylight Of our noncanopic wagon, a blanketfall He says to drive, Crocs up on the dash The whole panoptic world gone black A groaning fissure widens in the cityself Open road and gutterfingers on the wheel He whispers: All of us are seachangers But some of us are serious. Mitchell Welch Mitchell Welch has lived in Brisbane, Melbourne and the Gold Coast, where has worked as a public servant, cemetery administrator and communications consultant. He is currently based in Hobart. His first book, Vehicular Man, is forthcoming as part of the Rabbit Poets Series. More by Mitchell Welch › 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 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. 5 February 202417 February 2024 · Writing Here and now: our call for justice and liberation Tzedek Collective Our community is one of action and activism, informed by histories and imaginings of Jewish and other resistance. In our anticolonial work, we are explicitly anti-Zionist and work for a free Palestine. We take on this work not to centre or salvage Judaism and Jewishness, but to oppose settler colonialism in all its forms, and to acknowledge the specific and necessary role of Jewish anti-Zionists in opposing violence done in our names.
