Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015 · Uncategorized Noosa Beach Philip Neilsen My first dead body is when I am ten. A buzz below the shimmer tells us someone has drowned. We kids stare at him lying there on the sand. His face is powder blue like the guesthouse cups and plates laid out by aproned women at breakfast. The hairs on his chest and belly seem too coarse for an escaping spirit. More like an animal on an accidental roadside. Out in the darker water surfboards prop against the swell opportunistic, waiting. People shoo seagulls and us away. We decide because his eyes are open, trying to drink the sky. Philip Neilsen Philip Neilsen’s sixth collection of poetry Wildlife of Berlin (UWAP) was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor prize in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards 2019. More by Philip Neilsen › 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 22 November 202422 November 2024 · Fiction A map of underneath Madeleine Rebbechi They had been tangled together like kelp from the age of fourteen: sunburned, electric Meg and her sidekick Ruth the dreamer, up to all manner of sinister things. So said their parents; so their teachers reported when the two girls were found down at the estuary during a school excursion, whispering to something scaly wriggling in the reeds. 21 November 202421 November 2024 · Fiction Whack-a-mole Sheila Ngọc Phạm We sit in silence a few more moments as there is no need to talk further; it is the right place to end. There is more I want to know but we had revisited enough of the horror for one day. As I stood up to thank Bác Dzũng for sharing his story, I wished I could tell him how I finally understood that Father’s prophecy would never be fulfilled.
