Published in Overland Issue 226 Autumn 2017 Uncategorized Old growth / High definition Dan Hogan tiny lantana clots burning in jam jars light the way through the scrub / dragging a television by its rubbery grey power cord, screen down, leaf litter churns and parts, ripping the scab off top soil, a damp cut in the forest floor doesn’t appear in high definition and will heal beneath the din of galahparty and breeze, we push the heavy nonflatscreen television inside a hollow tree, moths clink the flame jars / eddying low, the moon is where we most expect it, there will never be an apocalypse, you say, thumbing a quartz vein in a pebble, tucking the power cord in, there’s already been one and here’s a tree who’s seen thylacines and war, but never billboard shadows chucked on streams of traffic blocking the sun this way, there will never be an apocalypse, you say, we already had one and this is where we live now / in the city, a lever is pulled and a crane’s arm slaps the sky, lowers concrete blocks into the ground, nearby the last tooth in an escalator disappears into a food court floor / our backs hurt, televisions are heavy business, you touch your shoulder with your ear, your clicking bones sing out / i crack my fingers we agree we’re at once polished and putrid / a new step emerges atop an escalatorcase while moonshine silvers the bark of this hollow tree, which will grow to accommodate the television / we shouldn’t be here, you say, the hollow tree will grow through the television, vine and copper tendrils entangled for ages, even after the surf stacks up and Tasmania floods or else it rise out of the sea and frisbee off into space, grazing the cheek of the moon on its way out / here’s old growth that hasn’t seen powerlines shoot electricity to places we’ll never go, its ancestors dead in the walls of whalers’ huts, here’s a tree while we wait for the fire to unclot the lantana and try to think of something cool to say / here’s a tree Image: ‘Giant cranes’ / Xymox Dan Hogan Dan Hogan is a writer and teacher from San Remo. They currently live and work on Gadigal land. More by Dan Hogan 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 24 March 202324 March 2023 War Conga line to Armageddon: the rush to get us into a war with China Ben Brooker It shouldn’t need spelling out that Australia could not win a war with China in any sense that matters, even with the backing of the US and its allies. At best, such a victory would be a Pyrrhic one. At worst, we would be so utterly humiliated as to not even know what kind of defeat had been inflicted upon us. First published in Overland Issue 228 23 March 2023 Trans rights Why gender essentialism is a white supremacist ideology Maddison Stoff The idea that these neo-Nazis are just ‘cosplayers’, rather than the local version of an international and decades-long attempt by numerous lone wolves and paramilitary groups to seize control of multiple countries, is too dangerous to seriously contemplate. The better question might be: why do so many anti-trans rights activists, who often see themselves as left-wing or self-describe as feminists, tolerate or downplay the presence of Nazis in their circles? And, just as importantly, why do neo-Nazis show up to support them?