Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015 · Uncategorized breakfast at the end of a financial year Joanne Burns bodies become corpses at the whim of a machine gun rising up from carthaginian waves no more suntans or lotophagi breakfasts by the sea houellebecq you warned us but who is so cognisant when a holiday is urgent like a first or last resort v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n wimbledon is second best squawks of cockatoo hijack talk of those treasonable tweets tennis brats make threats parents slurp back ego shakes as children morph to instant geniuses or genii on rapid break-the-fast tv coffee brews avocado smash and feta bites into the burnished toast the acropolis in the distance stoic and forlorn syntagma spreads like vertigo-a-go -go; here comes cautionary ritsos as he drags his bags of stones, scratching like the claws of tiny owls along the ground will those sydney lentil counters graduate to quinoa numerology dukka delphics million dollar bedsits or simply chocolate frogs just mind the gap between the trireme and the pier dock no ATMs ahoy fate curves like a recycled frisbee in search of destiny — Joanne Burns Joanne Burns is a Sydney poet. Her most recent book is brush (Giramondo Publishing 2014). She has been a teacher of English and creative writing and has been performing her work since the 1970s. More by Joanne Burns 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 29 May 202330 May 2023 · The university Universities as tools of apartheid Nick Riemer In his new book Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023), Nick Riemer mounts a comprehensive argument for the institutional academic boycott of Israel. This edited extract outlines the central rationale for the boycott—Israeli universities’ institutional role in enabling apartheid, occupation and anti-Palestinianism. 2 First published in Overland Issue 228 26 May 202326 May 2023 · Fiction Fiction | garramilla/Darwin Lulu Houdini We sit in East Point Reserve and look at how the gidjaas, green ants, make globe-like homes out of the leaves — connected edges with fibrous tissue that I later learn is faithful silk. Safe inside. Why isn’t it safe outside? I pick up the plastic around this circular lake cause this is the way […]