Published in Overland Issue 224 Spring 2016 · Uncategorized Impulse Zoe Barnard I wanted to know, in a pause between sentences, whether the fine, transparent step between nail and skin was designed to be removed. Smoothly, the cuticle tears away, like a loose thread and blood wells after a moment, flesh overcoming the shock of being asked to undress. I wanted to know, walking home from the station, if the joints would so easily bruise and swell when my knuckles pressed against another’s body. If muscle and bone resemble walls and fences, then the pain flares and yellow meets purple in an expanding: yes. I wanted to know, when I could first drive on my own, how it would feel to journey into a power pole or through the railing along the coast. At the empty intersection, in the middle of summer, when the road is melting and sea salt cracks in the air I tell that voice, not yet. Zoe Barnard Zoë Barnard is a freelance editor and writer, who lives and works in Perth. More by Zoe Barnard › 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 7 February 20257 February 2025 · Friday Fiction The gap between the trees Jenny Sinclair At first it was because I was angry. It might have looked like I was running away but I wasn’t. I was punching the earth with my feet. The faster I went — the harder my soles hit the ground — the better it felt. Because punching people is, you know, illegal. And wrong. But mostly illegal. 6 February 2025 · open letter Open Letter from Attendees of the National Anti-Racism Symposium at the Queensland University of Technology Delegates to the National Anti-Racism Symposium We urge QUT, politicians and others receiving pressure to not only resist these attacks on the intellectual freedom and academic integrity of the presenters, Carumba Institute and QUT, but, further, to condemn the racist, reactionary and divisive campaign that produced them. Anything less will be a capitulation to the most corrosively anti-intellectual forces in Australian society, which will ultimately harm not only Carumba and QUT, but all of us.
