Published in Overland Issue 225 Summer 2016 · Uncategorized Egg tempera Charlotte Guest A grinding in your stomach, deeply felt, beneath the fleshy dunes your mother said would have been considered beautiful in the late 1400s. You rise and fall with the bars on your lover’s stereo. He hitches your wool skirt and ignores the hot tears that tour your face and make you think of your Renaissance sisters, stroked into existence. We girls, we bleeding, breathless girls, taking dumb solace in the fact our bodies have a long history, are politically charged, and would’ve been considered beautiful in the late 1400s. When it’s over you roll onto your stomach, inspect yourself with a period eye, and look to the site marked by tepid blots. Image: ‘Stereo’ / flickr Read the rest of Overland 225 If you liked this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Charlotte Guest Charlotte Guest is a writer and publishing officer at UWA Publishing. Her debut collection Soap is due out in late 2017. More by Charlotte Guest › 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 March 20257 March 2025 · Poetry 3 songs for Charles Darwin John Forbes begins with languor, / the past tense of caress / which, besides flies & heat haze / post stress, / the intense air supplies — no ostrich feather fans / or punkahs needed — just to be at rest. 5 March 20257 March 2025 · Human rights Showing what really matters to us: on Australia’s continuing failure to uphold the UN torture prevention protocol Monique Hurley and Andreea Lachsz So why have there been no — or only limited — moves to implement the bare minimum obligations pursuant to the OPCAT? The answer appears to be a lack of political will and a dangerous disregard for the lives of people detained behind bars.
