Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015 · Uncategorized Night air Vanessa Kirkpatrick In memory of my grandmother The full moon washes the garden in light. Bare branches of elm, a tumble of ferns, each stone on the path from my mother’s house to the door of your own. In the notes of the mopoke’s song descending again and again, I fall through night air. Think of your hands, still warm, reaching across the bed as you close your eyes. High winds shunt the ragged clouds so it seems the moon is skating backwards. I want to keep holding the hand that held my own as a child. Loss is a pure tone released from the body. A note in the darkness descending again and again. Vanessa Kirkpatrick Vanessa Kirkpatrick lives in the Blue Mountains. Her first collection, To Catch the Light (2013), won the inaugural John Knight Memorial Poetry Manuscript Prize and was commended for the 2013 Anne Elder Award. More by Vanessa Kirkpatrick › 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 8 December 2023 · Fiction Fiction | The Victims Emma Jayne Willson Every morning I checked the Director’s calendar to ensure there were no meeting clashes, no opportunity for her polished façade to slip. Once I’d made the mistake of booking two meetings without leaving ten minutes between them, thus forcing her to run across the sprawling campus. She arrived late for her meeting with the Provost, […] First published in Overland Issue 228 7 December 20238 December 2023 · Food Righteous appetites: the dilemmas of the ethical omnivore’s diet Jaimee Edwards The pastoral is our setting for the good life that puts the 'ethical' in 'ethical sausage'. The websites for small-scale farms and ethical meat butchers around the world look like brochures for retirement living. Together, the happy animals, their conscientious handlers, and ceremonial butchers form a picture of aligned values.
