Published in Overland Issue 217 Summer 2014 Uncategorized Skater Tim Thorne A skateboarder hisses down Salisbury Crescent, the sound of a soluble Panadol in the glass. The night is packed full of fog. Only the rolling planet keeps the white air under control, delays the emissions of cinnabar, indigo, umber and jet, madder, vermilion, cerise. So the polity slides; the head-on traffic is to negotiate. What we are wrapped in blurs vision no less. Headlines are in black even on the radio so as to offer their own illumination. We became motorists back when the polls lit up like country pubs. Trucks, motorbikes are louder but I have learned to sleep through everything except what these tiny wheels do to the bones in my ears, knocking my brain out of sleep, loosening the lid of whatever dream was bottled up, bright and persuasive. Fragility is overrated, but it has its uses. Somewhere on a minor island something worthy of literal tragedy plays out. Meanwhile the circus tents are planted firmly, even though the clowns could never be trusted, and we realise they are there ‘for the long haul’ like some earnest NGO but without the moral compass. 3I find it hard to imagine myself into a critical instant, a need to swerve. Yet there is vicarious fear, adrenal, almost fugitive. When I wake up I’ll know that I was hearing him flow down the hill like cascading preferences on a ballot paper. Tim Thorne Tim Thorne’s fourteenth and most recent poetry collection is The Unspeak Poems and other verses (Walleah Press, 2014). In 2012 he was awarded the Christopher Brennan Award for his contribution to Australian poetry. More by Tim Thorne 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 7 February 2023 Aboriginal Australia Victoria police back down, is this a case for defunding? Crystal McKinnon and Meriki Onus After three arduous years, Victoria Police have today withdrawn their charges against two organisers of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest. Whilst we welcome their decision, we note that their mediocrity gave them no other option. Emboldened by their state-sanctioned impunity, Victoria Police’s ineptitude hit a dead end. Pigs cannot fly. First published in Overland Issue 228 6 February 20237 February 2023 Aboriginal Australia Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali: listen, hear, think, understand from our sacred Mother Earth and our Water Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali Collective To winaga-li, Gomeroi/Kamilaroi people must be able to access Gunimaa. They must be able to connect and re-connect. Over 160 years of colonisation has privileged intensive agriculture, grazing and heavily extractive water management regimes, enabled by imposed property regimes and governance systems. Gunimaa and Gali still experience the violent repercussions of these processes, including current climate changes which are exacerbating impacts, as droughts become longer, floods and heat extremes become more intense, and climatic zones shift, impacting on species’ viability and biodiversity.