Published in Overland Issue 217 Summer 2014 · Uncategorized I wrote lines during a period of insanity, too Emily Stewart after Gig Ryan Flung them on the riverbed which flooded that week next. Not short of invectives, I cursed pebbles as flint, startling the public of Wagga Caravan Park like a goanna loosed under leaves. What rot, said some, and I did believe them – with the brute finality of a gum limb struck down for brooms. Good-bye seventh sister, with your holy plaintive wings. Good-bye this underdress of drenched silk Dear accomplice, I can’t stand this ratio. The timbre of lunatic meets. Let us choose a better mooring for slugging bottles next; let us be less regretful. When did time start angling in, so diagrammatic, so anodyne? I hunker with a slew of digressions, mostly physical, layabouts, greying husks, what-have-yous. This night of nights features one darling wedding then the next: a blouse and blooms revue, or instances awaiting a long car trip home where I’ll couch tomorrow’s ache as somehow edifying Emily Stewart Emily Stewart is a poet and freelance editor based in Sydney. More by Emily Stewart › 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 14 February 202514 February 2025 · Poetry 9 to 5 Dave Drayton volunteer to clown / undermine an award / construct to heave / interfere in class / dismantle if civil / disregard no cause / freelance at ennui 1 13 February 202514 February 2025 · Reviews Echoing of the white gaze in Evie Wyld’s The Echoes Karen Wyld Wyld’s creation of voiceless-nameless-lifeless Blak people in The Echoes serves no narrative purpose. This novel is not truth-telling of invasion and occupation, and it does not envision justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Instead of rejecting or confronting lazy literary tropes and colonial-style narratives, the author has erased Blak voices, bodies, histories and futures, adding her own voice to a never-ending echo of white-gazed literature when silence would have been better.
