Published in Overland Issue 219 Winter 2015 · Uncategorized Exhumed at Earth’s end Rachel J Fenton I dug out the porcelain bust of a doll, first; her cheeks the tickled-pink of rosehips, her nose, so small yet broken. Frost bit its comic end. Without arms, her hips, too, were frozen in the earth’s cervix, mid birth; unable to push herself free of it, she’d given up, suspended between the spit and swallow of orange clay. Her eyes, black dots beneath twice fired glaze, long since lost. Extinct. But her mouth, the diagram of a seal, was perfect. Rachel J Fenton Rachel J Fenton lives in Auckland. Finalist in the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize for her novel Some Things the English, she is also an award-winning graphic poet AKA Rae Joyce, and is co-editing the forthcoming anthology of women’s cartoons Three Words. She tweets as @RaeJFenton. More by Rachel J Fenton › 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 4 October 20245 October 2024 · Main Posts Announcing the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers 2024 longlist Editorial Team Sponsored by Trinity College at the University of Melbourne and supporters, the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, established in 2014 and now in its ninth year, recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. 27 September 20244 October 2024 · Poetry Because a wind blazes Dženana Vucic Because after autumn there are / other autumns, / we learn to eat the wind. / This is what we shall do / with all our anger.
