Published in Overland Issue 226 Autumn 2017 · Uncategorized Switch Omar Sakr my heart is a nude bulb. Or is it my cock? Both muscles are small & hard. Blink often, or at least wear protection, I repeated but you refused. Said light made all days a Pollock painting, spotted colours running each other over. You cupped the fluttering red of it made shadowed animals dance along my ribcage with your hands. I was dizzy beneath the beasts you made of me. Sometimes I let loose language that shot across our skins, erecting our hairs. Other times silence arrived in the mail, it popped out of phones, leaked from fanged sockets. I dribbled it in my sleep. I tried turning everything off, tried to find you in the dark & in the hush see your small muscles burst electric. Image: ‘City ribcage’ / Cydarianna Read the rest of Overland 226 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Omar Sakr Omar Sakr is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, These Wild Houses (Cordite, 2017) and The Lost Arabs (UQP, 2019) which won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry. His debut novel, Son of Sin (2022) is out now. More by Omar Sakr › 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 5 November 20245 November 2024 · Reviews True dreams: Martin Edmond’s Conrad Dougal McNeill Witnessing, reading through this absorbing, elegant, careful example of the art, is always a kind of mourning, and Conrad, an author for whom writing was “the conversion of nervous force into phrases,” is the perfect figure to focus Edmond’s ongoing work of mourning. 4 November 20244 November 2024 · Palestine The incarceration of Indigenous and Palestinian children: a shared legacy of settler colonialism Sarah Abdo In Palestine, children are detained as a means of maintaining the occupation and suppressing resistance. In Australia, youth incarceration extends the legacy of forced removals and perpetuates intergenerational trauma among Indigenous communities. Children are targeted precisely because they represent the continuity and survival of their communities. This intentional disruption is not simply a matter of misguided policy but part of a broader effort to undermine Indigenous and Palestinian resilience.
